Nopales, baby

‘Rollitos’ is a Spanish term which means ‘Little Rolled-up things’… or something pretty close to that.
It is often applied to almost any combination of ingredients, usually rolled up in a corn or wheat tortilla.

    This video has melted cheese in one pan.. pork fried with nopal cactus in another pan…. then you fry some corn tortillas (they didn’t show how to do that.. but in Mexico everyone knows the deal… like here in the US we wouldn’t need to show how to pour cereal into a bowl). Then you lay a spoonful of the pork/nopal mix into the cheese, roll it up like a tiny burrito.. and then place it into the tortilla shell.

   This all seems like a great amount of pans to wash…. and excess movement and work…. I heat the tortillas with no butter or lard… then fry the pork and nopal, then heat the cheese, and pour it into the tortillas, and then spoon the pork nopal into the tortillas, either rolling them up, or leaving them flat…. and I’d probably smother the things with lots of my cactus salsa with corn and beans.. yum, now that all sounds good. With all that salsa I’d eat a bit less of the cheese and pork, and still feel like I et plenty.

   This video is in Spanish….. but a person can watch it and still understand most of the preparation instructions just by observing.  That is one of the best ways to increase your knowledge of a foreign language… watch TV shows that you can understand just by the action… you will pick up little bits of language here and there.

   The video is well done…. the food looks great…. but it is a bit heavy on the fats and cholesterol.. really heavy in fact…. but I suppose having one or two on occasion ain’t gonna kill a person (right away).

   For another video of one of the delights of Mexican cooking, you must watch the video below (also in Spanish).

   There are many ways to make rellenos… many ingredients can be used…. one of my favorite ways is with nopal. This video shows pretty well how to make them.   I’d say though that heating food with plastic is not a great idea.  For my favorite nopal rellenos recipe, I just heat the leaves in a  pan with olive oil, lightly frying them to heat them through… but you don’t want to overcook cactus. And our cactus is fine raw… so there is no need to do anything more than heating so you have a warm meal.