What is ceviche?
Ceviche is a Mexican seafood favorite that can delight the palate if it’s prepared right. Shrimp ceviche is prepared by marinating the shrimp in lemon juice overnight, and then adding minced fresh garlic, chopped green onions, cilantro, radishes, cucumber, tomato, avocado and then salt and pepper to taste. The flavors blend together to make the ceviche robust and oh so fresh tasting!
Usually, it’s spooned on to a fresh hard corn tortilla (a tostada shell) and enjoyed with an extra spritz of fresh lemon across the shrimp. Some people like to take the ceviche mix and work it in a lightly oiled skillet as a "stir fry" that they eat with some rice and beans, or it can be put into a warm flour tortilla and rolled into a burrito. The shrimp ceviche is also good as a taco filing, again in a hard corn taco tortilla or a freshly made warm flour tortilla folded in half.
Other types of ceviche are made by the famous ingredients in the "Siete Mares" (7 Seas) combination famous in many Mexican seafood kitchens. They take raw shrimp, octopus, clams, mussels, crawfish, squid, oysters and frog and again marinade it overnight in the fresh lemon (and sometimes orange) juice. This is a real seafood lovers delight and the preparation is pretty much the same as the shrimp ceviche in that after the overnight soaking in citrus juices, the mixed seafood ceviche gets an addition of yellow onion, cilantro, radishes, cucumbers, chopped green onion, tomato, avocado, minced garlic, some cumin and your salt and pepper to taste! This sounds like a crazy flavor combination but it really works together on your favorite tortila, helping to cool you down when it’s hot outside!
Enjoy your ceviche with a cool glass of horchata (rice water) or a watermelon jugo (juice) and you can really taste the best of old Mexico right there at home!
Ceviche is a seafood dish prepared by marinating seafood in citrus juice. Sometimes garlic and spices are added. The acid in the citrus juice “cooks” the fish or shellfish. It is usuallu served at room temperature. I have tried shrimp made this way but didn’t care for it because to me the texture was like eating raw shrimp.
