Nopalitos Rellenos (Cheese Stuffed Nopalitos)

This is a wonderful recipe, I would say is the sort of deconstruction of “Nopales in Chile Colorado” recipe but with a twist, the egg coating. In Mexico egg coating is very popular, the most popular dish is “Chiles Rellenos” which you can find here in a more healthy way. Anyway, I was given this jar of whole nopalitos by my friends from MexGrocer, so I decided to give this recipe a go and I do not regret to use the nopalitos this way. It is a bit of a job, but the results are just wonderful. So come on! it is Friday night, give this recipe a try and you will see, you will be converted to eat nopalitos (cactus) all the time.

Makes 5 stuffed nopalitos per jar

Ingredients

For the nopalitos

• 1 Azteca whole nopalitos in brine jar
• 10 slices mozzarella cheese
• 3 egg
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• salt to taste
• 1 cup pressed rapeseed oil

For the Chile Colorado sauce

• 5 dried Anaheim chillies, cleaned and deseeded
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 small onion
• 1 peeled garlic clove
• Salt to taste

To garnish

• 1/2 onion finely chopped
• coriander finely chopped
• 1 jalapeño chilli finely chopped
• 10 gr crumbled feta cheese

Method

Make the chile colorado sauce. Cook the chillies in hot water for 3 min.

Place them in a blender with some of the water that you boiled them in and add the tomatoes, onion, salt and garlic and blend them until getting a nice smooth sauce.

Pass the sauce through a sieve to remove any chilli skin and put it to boil in low heat for 10 min. Reserve.

Drain and wash the nopalitos (cactus). Remove any excess of  water.

Place a whole nopalito on a flat surface, then put two slices of mozzarella cheese on top follow by another whole nopalito, repeat this until you finish stuffing all the nopalitos.

Prepare the egg coating. Separate the egg whites from the egg yolks.

Beat the egg whites until soft peaks then add the egg yolks and continue mixing until everything is combined. Put aside.

Have the coating ready, place the all purpose flour on a place and add some salt.

Put the rapeseed oil to heat on a large frying pan to medium heat. Once is hot, start coating the nopalitos.

Coat the cheese stuffed nopalitos with the flour first, then coat them with the egg coating.

Fry the nopalitos one by one in the oil. 3 min on each side.

Once they are fried, place them on top of some paper kitchen towels to remove the excess of oil.

Serve them with some of the chile colorado sauce and garnish them with some onio, coriander, jalapeno chilli and feta cheese.

Tips

• Your can get “Azteca” whole nopalitos in brine in www.mexgrocer.co.uk
• If you can’t find dried anaheim chillies, use guajillo chillies, but use only 3 chillies and more tomatoes as the guajillos are spicier than anaheim.

Listo!

Provecho!