The prickly pear enjoys a very mixed reputation internationally.
It is a cactus native to the Americas but was widely exported in the 1800s. In Australia it is now considered a particularly pernicious and unwelcome weed. But in Mediterranean and Arabic countries the fruit is sought after as a delicacy.
In the first of our series on Arabic desserts the food writer Anissa Helou uses them to flavour a perennial favourite in Europe, the Arab world and even Australia: ice cream! She told Anna McNamee , Arabs were enjoying ice cream at least three hundred years ago. And it is still very popular today.
