This is a cactus pear (or cactus fig), the fruit from a prickly pear cactus. All of it is edible, but I would probably never trust myself to eat the outer pad (which is considered a vegetable). It’s covered in spines. I made one wrong move holding this thing and wound up with about seven in my index finger.
The heart is delicious but it’s impossible to eat without eating the seeds. I guess the seeds are digestible if you only eat one or two of these in a sitting. Eventually I decided eating the sometimes hard, sometimes crunchy seeds wasn’t very pleasant and figured out that I could let the heart dissolve in my mouth and separate itself from the seeds.
The rind or meat or flesh or whatever between the padding and the heart is good, too. That’s the part that can be used to make jams or smoothies, unless you can somehow puree and strain the entire thing. But I don’t have a Top Chef kitchen.
It tastes great, and it’s visually impressive when you first cut it open. I’m not going to describe the taste using other fruit as points of reference… It wasn’t a familiar taste but it wasn’t exotic, either.
