Recipe: Lightly brush olive oil on a flour tortilla. Drape the tortilla over an empty large ramekin or tin can on a baking pan. Toast the tortilla in a 350 degree oven till crisp. Carefully trim the base and excess tortilla shell after it cools with a knife.
Lay some trimmed romaine leaves on a plate. Set the tortilla shell on top. Fill the shell with chopped romaine. Garnish the plate with tomato slices, toasted pepitas, pinto beans and avacado slices. Sprinkle match stick cut carrots on the chopped romaine and drape thin pimiento slices over the lettuce.
Trim the needles off of a small fresh prickly pear cactus paddle and slice into thin strips. (Prickly pear cactus paddles=Nopales) Saute large peeled shrimp and garlic in olive oil. Add the nopales, cilantro leaf, sea salt, black pepper, chopped green onion and toss. Add a good amount of tequila and reduce. The cactus juice will thicken the tequila slightly. Add a squeeze of lime juice and take the pan off of the heat.
Mix virgin olive oil with a splash of wine vinegar and add the vinaegrette to the tequila pan juices.
Set the shrimp on the salad. Cascade the nopales and slightly warm tequila dressing over the shrimp and salad. Sprinkle some sliced green onion on top.
This salad is pretty, tasty and very light! Fresh nopales are much better than canned nopales. The tequila flavor is very mild. The crispy pepitas (toasted hulled calabaza seeds) and tortilla shell give this salad an interesting texture. Yummy! ... Shawna
