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.

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. First, I have been told explicitly that, even in the polite, fancy company of a dinner party, you don’t eat this fruit with a fork. My father-in-law, from Sardinia, used to pick them up while wandering in the wild and sun-drenched Sardinian countryside when he was a kid. The process of moving the famous potted citrus trees into the orangery for winter was just about to begin.Fichi d’India, or Prickly Pear Cactus Fruit, are full of seeds and many people ingest the entire fruit without separating seeds from pulp. And if all other shrubs burn, which happens quite frequently, the fichi d’India will just hang its leaves, so that they resemble a waving mitten. I eagerly filled a large cereal box with Fichi to the brim and wrapped it very generously in bin liners and packed it in my hand luggage to bring home to the UK. Instead, you take the bite and press it to the roof of your mouth to release the juices and the pulp.

I had a sister and cousins who loved them as much as I did, so it was always a study in patience to leave them to ripen long enough, but a race to get to them first the moment they did. The first time I tasted them, I thought they were the most strange thing ever, then I gave them another chance and, yes, they are a fun and different bite experience! In Sicily the fico d’india thrives; literally, the Indian Fig an exotic introduced plant has been claimed by locals as its own. Still, I am impressed by the olive maestros’ trick of cutting the blades of a fico d’India in half and rubbing the juice into the wounds and scratches, they get on their hands and arms when pruning trees. We had (and I’m jealous of my childhood self here) an avocado tree, some banana trees, a mulberry tree, a loquat tree, lemon trees in abundance, apricot trees, vines and , you guessed it, prickly pears.

The variety cultivated later in the season in Catania province is probably the most generous in flavour and size. Oh yes, chilled is a must…I kind of just swallow the seeds without thinking too much about it, actually…kinda like tapioca pudding. Most cacti produce a good product, I have three different types from Sicily and one from Mexico… In Sicily I found a red ice cream made with fichi d’india, delicious! Of all the exoticism found in the Calabrese landscape the fichi d’india, or prickly pears, stand out as particularly interesting.