CEVICHE

It's another week of cooking from Mark Bittman's The Food Matters Cookbook. This week our recipe was chosen by Jen of Vanilla Lemon. Jen chose Corn-Avocado Salad (with a Little Something Seared on Top.) You can find the orginal recipe here . We follow the recipe as written or use it as inspiration for our own creation. This week while I was reading the ingredients Ceviche came to mind. Ceviche, pronounced "seh-BEE-chay" is a popular South American dish where raw fish is marinated in the juice of an acidic fruit. The juice basically "cooks" the fish. With the warm summer weather outside you can stay out of the kitchen while the fish cooks in the marinade.

I started off down at the harbor to see what looked good. Using Mark's recipe as a guide I checked out the scallops and they looked great. You can use bay scallops ( the small scallops) but I prefer diver scallops.

I cut each scallop in half (to make two round scallops) and each scallop into quarters. Covered it with lemon, lime, and orange juice and let it marinate for three hours. Then I added avocado, onion, cucumber, serrano peppers, and cilantro. You let it sit another hour and it is ready to serve. The perfect appetizer for a warm summer day.

 CEVICHE

Makes 4 servings

1 pound scallops (bay or diver, if using diver scallops cut them into bite size pieces)
or 1 pound white fish, cut into bite size pieces

1 cup lime juice (about 10 limes) or any other citrus

1/3 cup minced red onion

1/3 cup seeded and diced tomato

1/2 cup peeled, seeded and diced cucumber

1 avocado cut into bite sized pieced

1 serrano pepper, seeded and minced

3/4 cup chopped cilantro

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a glass bowl or dish cover the scallops or fish with the lime juice and marinate in the refrigerator for 3 hours. Toss gently about every hour.

Add the onion, tomato, cucumber, avocado, serrano, salt and pepper to taste, and chopped cilantro. Let sit in the refrigerator one more hour. Drain out most of the juice before serving.

Serve with tortilla chips.

Notes- We prefer the flavor of white fish in this recipe because we like the texture better than the scallops. After marinating overnight the texture of the scallops were much better.

For all of the Food Project Members creative takes on this recipe click here.