Nopales Asados con Limón

The nopal belongs to the central plateau. Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, the State of Mexico, the high valleys around Mexico City where the prickly pear cactus grows in every empty lot and along every roadside. This is altiplano food. The eagle on the Mexican flag is standing on a nopal for a reason.

Nopales asados is the most honest preparation of the paddle. No boiling, no chopping into salad, no disguising. You shave the thorns, score the surface, salt it, and lay it on a hot comal until the green darkens and the edges char. That is the dish. The lime, the salt, the raw onion at the end are not seasoning so much as punctuation.

The trick is the comal. It must be hot. A cool comal steams the nopal and you get the baba, that clear slime everyone outside Mexico complains about. A hot comal sears the surface, drives the moisture out, and leaves you with a paddle that tastes green and smoky and slightly mineral, like the high desert it grew in. The salt-and-rest before cooking helps. So does the scoring. The senoras who sell asados outside the metro stations in Mexico City have done this their whole lives and they have all worked it out the same way. Cada estado, su propia cocina, but on this one the central states agree.

My mother was from Jalisco and she did not grow up on nopales the way the chilangos do. She learned them after she moved to Colonia Roma, from a woman who sold them already grilled at the corner of Alvaro Obregon and Orizaba. Her note in the margin: 'salt them first, the baba comes out before the fire.' Saber cocinar es saber vivir.