Scallop & mango ceviche

For ➍
500 g dry sea scallops, tough white muscle removed*
2 ripe mangoes, peeled & chopped, divided
8 cl lime juice
¾ tsp salt
180 g thinly sliced chilli peppers, such as poblanos or jalapeños
50 g very thinly sliced red onion

Bring 1.2 cm water to a gentle simmer in a large skillet over medium heat. Add scallops and cook until firm and just cooked through, 3 to 5 m. Transfer the scallops to a medium non-reactive bowl with a slotted spoon. (Discard the poaching liquid) Add half the mango to the bowl with the scallops. Puree the remaining mango with lime juice and salt in a blender or food processor until smooth. Pour the puree over the scallops.
Add chilli peppers and onion. Gently toss to combine. Cover and refrigerate the ceviche for 1 h, gently stirring halfway through.
Serve chilled.**

*Dry sea scallops differ from wet scallops, which have been treated with sodium tripolyphosphate. Wets are less flavourful, and will not brown properly.
*Try serving this ceviche Peruvian-style, with hard-boiled egg, sweet potato, lettuce and corn. Or keep it simple and serve it on salad greens with tortilla chips on the side.

Pico de Gallo

For ➍/ 50 cl
4 plum tomatoes, seeded & chopped
3 onions, finely chopped
2 fresh chili peppers, mild or hot, seeded & finely chopped
2 tbs red or yellow bell pepper, chopped
1½ ts fresh coriander leaves, finely chopped
1 ts lime juice
salt & pepper

Combine ingredients in a glass bowl and refrigerate for at least 30 m before serving or refrigerate it overnight.
Serve with Che Guevara's ceviche or another ceviche. Or with grilled tuna or salmon.

In 1953, the Mexican communist painter Frida Kahlo painted this Naturaleza Muerta Con Sandias (Still Life with Watermelon), coming close to the ingredients of a pico de gallo, combining fruit and peppers, in ever changing combinations, depending on the region. Sometimes it is closer to a (fruit) salad than a sauce, especially when the pieces are roughly chopped in not too small pieces. (Artist suggestion from the wonderful Feasting on Art site.)
Try the similar salsa fresca.
Or the green mango variation.

Che Guevara's ceviche

For ➍
200 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.

tip: cooking seafood with whisky

Use whisky for scallops ceviche:

For lunch, Scottish fishermen shuck a fresh scallop, put a little whisky on it, and eat it like a ceviche. Try this with almost any type of seafood. For fresh fish or scallops, put some Bourbon in it or single-malt whisky (the purest form of whisky) and eat it. If you don’t use a single malt, then it will be a blend and won’t be as pure.
Use whisky to cure salmon:

A single malt is too expensive, so cover the fish in a blend for 24 hours, cure it with salt and sugar for another 24 h, then lay it on acetate, put on a layer of single malt whisky, and then refrigerate it until it’s ready to be served.
Use fish at room temperature:

Make sure that the fish is at room temperature, not warm, but not straight from the refrigerator. You don’t want to overcook the fish, so if the center is cold, then it won’t cook evenly. With room-temperature fish, get a pan really hot, add a little butter/oil and salt and put the fish in it. Sear it quickly on one side so it gets a little crust then immediately remove from the heat, flip the fish over, leaving it in the pan. The heat from the pan will permeate through to cook the fish from the bottom up, while the side that was initially on the heat will also continue to cook the fish from the top down. With this method, you are not cooking the fish all the way through (this also works with other seafood like scallops).
Poach fish:

For poaching, bring whatever the poaching liquid is to a simmer, then take it off the heat, and put the fish in. Don't put the fish on heat.

Read other cooking tips: fish & seafood @ microwave, cooking fish in papillotte, cooking scallops, cooking & broiling in the oven. Read more tips.