Breakfast of Champions Prickly Pears

If you haven't tried these already, you'll want to try the "Breakfast of Champions Prickly Pears." Before you try these prickly pear fruits you'll want to know a bit about them first.

At certain times of the year, every fence along every south Italian road is ripe with spiky cactus fruits. The fichi d'India otherwise known as prikly pears are everywhere heavy with fruit in varying colours and degrees of ripeness, and even the supermarkets sell prickly pear in an unspiked, ready to peel version. You will need a special plucking contraption combined with thick work gloves and buckets of water to safely pick the pears. You'll want to be careful and try to avoid the spikes from getting in your fingers and on the table. Known to few, the fruit of the nopales cactus, are actually quite edible. Called prickly pears, these neon fruit provide delicious juice that tastes like a cross between all natural bubblegum and watermelon. Prickly pear juice is often used to make jam or candy, but works wonders in cocktails and used in vinaigrettes for salads. The juice can be used to flavor cream cheese frosting for a lime flavored cupcake, and boiled down with a bit of orange and lemon juice to make a sauce for fruit salads and cheesecakes.

On this site you will find traditional authentic Italian recipes passed down from generations of Italian grandmothers and Nonna's from all the regions of Italy. Rossella is the host of the all new online cooking show and food webisode series, Cooking with Nonna. Rossella was born into a family of culinary aficionado's and food lovers. Growing up there was always something on the stove, says Rossella a first generation Italian American from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Her roots are from Mola di Bari, a small fishing village known as Mola where her parents were born. For Rossella cooking was never about cooking, it was about family, community and spending quality time with each other. Russell spent most of her childhood in the kitchen with her maternal Grandmother Roman learning the long legacy of recipes passed down through the generations.

Some of the Italian recipes you will find on the site include three cheese pasta with zucchini and b�chamel recipe, Anelletti passing with ricotta salata recipe, arborio rice with dry fava beans recipe, Arrabbiata sauce recipe, avocado pesto recipe, baked rigatoni recipe, baked rotini recipe, black tagliolini with calamari e Zucca recipe, meat soup recipe, broccoli and shells recipe, broccoli with Maritati pasta recipe, butternut squash ravioli with porcini sauce recipe, roasted butternut squash with homemade ricotta cheese ravioli recipe, butternut squash risotto recipe, calamari pasta with swordfish and eggplant recipe, cannelloni recipe, gnocchi with peas and pancetta recipe, grilled balsamic chicken with mushrooms over bow ties recipe, homemade four cheese ravioli recipe, fusilli with cauliflower and tomato sauce recipe and more.