I Fichi D'india [Italian Edition]

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They may be getting on in their age (no offence, guys), but present them with an opportunity to obtain free red fichi d’India from an otherwise untouched source and they are more than willing to clamber over the walking trail’s railings, cross over the channel and jostle their way through other vegetation to reach this prickly bush. Your basic goal is to move it around in your mouth, guiding both the seeds and the actual fruit from your tongue to the top of your mouth, then down your throat. The variety cultivated later in the season in Catania province is probably the most generous in flavour and size. After negotiating the endless prickles of the plant and cutting around the spiky skin of the fruit, the sweet fleshy pulp filled with pips is eaten with particular relish by locals.

In Ethiopia we lived in the semi-arid part—I’ve found that not all people in Ethiopia even know what they are or how to eat them.

They simply need to be peeled with care and eaten, I often wash them first to remove as many prickles as I can, then on go the latex gloves to fully peel the jackets away and discard. The neighbour received widespread acclaim for his brilliance in cultivating his Big Bastards and found himself enshrined in some version of history. My little moment of mouth-wiping on the way back to the car served to spread the pain further abroad.

Mary, I had some rather uninspiring prickly pears my first time out as well; if they were the yellow kind that you had, I *highly* recommend trying the red as well. My sister-in-law told me that most of the non-Italians (and even some Italians who didn’t grow up in Sicily like her family) either don’t eat fichi d’india at all because it’s too intimidating, or they eat it wrong. After 20 days, pour the liqueur into sanitized bottles through a fine mesh sieve and funnel to remove any remaining bits of fruit. My dad with some other relatives inherited years and years ago a land on the Mount Etna cultivated with prickly pear cacti, but it was then sold (I was really really disappointed of this choice. Always keen to embrace the autentica esperienza Siciliana, we veered onto the shoulder of the road and parked the car.

Educated in both countries and immersed in the culture and language of each, she seamlessly bridges both worlds.