Ceviche

[honeybee]

Who makes ceviche? What do you put in it?

[Constance]

I have a friend who lives near the ocean in Masachusetts, and he makes ceviche quite frequently. He varies the ingredients acccording to what is available. Sometimes he uses chopped tomatoes, and often adds chopped fresh ginger as he's very fond of that flavor. Some recipes call for garlic, olive oil, various herbs (oregano, cilantro, basil), olives, capers, even Pace Piquante sauce.
The main premice is very fresh seafood marinated in lime (and sometimes other citrus) juice which "cooks" it.
Here is a basic recipe:

Ceviche

2 lbs mixed seafood including a firm fish, clams, shrimp, scallops, etc.
1 very large onion, thinly sliced
1/4 c chopped parsley
5 ribs thinly sliced celery
Serrano chile peppers (or your favorite) to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
Lime juice to cover

Combine all ingredients and refrigerate two hours.

[kitchenelf]

This is one of my favorites Scallop Ceviche

[Constance]

I talked to my friend about the Ceviche today, and found that he also chops little cucumbers (pickling size) into his, and uses a combination of lime, lemon & orange juices.

[Haggis]

My Peruvian flatmate makes it occasionally, he uses:

fish (nile perch mostly), cubed
a lot of lime juice
finely chopped celery
alot of coriander
finely diced red chillies
then, just before serving he adds in some finely chopped red onion so its still crisp

He generally serves it with boiled/steamed sweet potato and plain white rice to soak up all the lovely juices.

[Muffin man]

I make a pearl meat ceviche which is made up of pearl meat , Lime, corriander,chilli ,salt & pepper.......

[Constance]

MM, by pearl meat, are you referring to oysters?

[Muffin man]

No by pearl meat I refer to the mussel that keeps the oyster shell shut. Where we live is one of the main pearling towns of australia. The oysters they use for growing the pearl is where you get the pearl meat the oysters they use is a really large oyster called the pinctada maxima it produces the biggest pearl's in the world. it is really expensive cause you have to kill the oyster to harvest the pearl meat. It cost's around $180 AUD per kilo.

[Lugaru]

On saturday I did some great shrimp ceviche with that, diced onions, tomatoes, cilantro, serranos, huichol sauce and plenty of limes.

MY hometown dosent use pure lime though, they use one of two secret ingredients to make the base. One is shrimp stock which many fish sellers have in bags. This you can make with shrimp bullion cubes, and if you cant find any check out the asian section... people in the philipines love those. The other option is using clamato which is what I used on saturday... your ceviche ends up a super refreshing coctail of a meal.

[Constance]

The clamato is a great idea!