For ➍200 g firm white fish fillets*
juice of 15 fresh limes**
250 g cooked prawns
2 tbs chopped coriander
5 green onions, chopped
1 red onion, diced
2 avocados, peeled, pitted & chopped
2 fresh tomatoes, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
pico de Gallo***
2 ts salt
1 pinch black pepper
Cut the raw fish into cubes and spread out single-layered in a large dish. Pour in enough lime juice** to cover the fish. Cover dish, and refrigerate for 24 h.
Remove fish from the refrigerator, and mix in prawns, coriander, green onions, red onions, avocados, tomatoes, and celery. Stir in pico de Gallo**** to taste, and season with salt and pepper. Cover. Refrigerate for another 12 h.
Serve as appetizer, with ice-cold, almost frozen (Mexican) beer and a slice of good bread.
*Double quantities to serve as a summer dish.
**About 50 cl bottled juice. Lemon juice can be used instead, or a mixture of ⅔ lemon and ⅓ grapefruit juice.
***Pico de Gallo is a Mexican sauce with tomatoes, chili peppers and onions. Use canned salsa (a Mexican taco dip sauce might do) or make it yourself.
Believed to be the preferred ceviche of South American revolutionary Che Guevara and close to Mexican versions of a ceviche. Picture shows Castro and Guevara (r.) in the Miguel Schultz prison in Mexico in 1956, where he wrote his Poem to Fidel before taking off on the disastrous Granma expedition.
Ceviche is popular from Mexico through all of South America, especially in Peru and Ecuador. Some say that pre-Hispanic peoples cooked fish with a fruit called tumbo. The Incas ate salted fish and a chicha-marinated fish dish. The Spanish contributed the Mediterranean custom of using lemons and onions.
Other historians believe that the ceviche's origin is Arabian, imported to Peru by Arabian immigrants, or, as seems more likely, by Spaniards with Arabic heritage, and re-interpreted by the Peruvians of the coastal area.
Most likely, the name comes from the Spanish word 'escabeche' meaning 'marinade', derived from the Arabic 'sikbaj'. While the basic of ceviche stays the same, cooking fish in a cold way by putting it in lemon juice or lime juice alcohol, there are local variations.
