The fish will then be left to cool in its aromatic bath, and I'll serve it later with some good crusty bread to soak up the juices. Over these cooked fillets I'll then pour a hot and fragrant marinade: a mix of, say, vinegar and apple juice, spiked with garlic, shallots, grated ginger, lemon zest and chilli. I might dip the fillets in flour first too so they'll have an extra crispy coating - this crispness works well with the marinade as it soaks up the flavours a little more than the flesh alone might do. Or as a tapas-style dish, served alongside other delicious fish treats.Īll I do is fillet the fish then fry the fillets quickly over a fairly high heat to give them some colour on the flesh side and just a little crispy edge. It's a great recipe for using up a glut of oily fish, and it's perfect for a large group of fish diners. While this involves cooking the fish, the final dish itself is served at room temperature. When I find myself looking for something a little different to do with oily fish, such as mackerel, herring or garfish, and I have a little bit of time on my hands, I'll plump for the hot marinade option. But my own preference is for a just-marinated fresh, zingy, crunchy experience. It's actually perfectly safe to keep your marinated fish in the fridge and eat it the next day, when you'll find the texture much softer and less ‘raw'. Over the years, my marinade time has got shorter and shorter, and quite often now I'll just prepare it and eat it straight away - especially if I've made it with some eye-wateringly fresh bass or black bream, because I can't keep my hands off it. When I first started making ceviche, I would leave it for an hour at least. You can vary the amount of time you allow the fish to marinate before you eat it. Ceviche is often made with a mixture of fish species but it's equally good with just one type. But really oily fish like mackerel, while they can make an interesting addition, don't tend to work as a main ingredient. I'd certainly consider using salmon or trout too. If you find totally raw Japanese-style fish preparation just too alien, but like the idea of eating fish in its natural state, ceviche is definitely worth a try.įirm, white-fleshed fish, such as black bream, bass, pouting, whiting and pollack, work best. As the acid is absorbed, the translucent flesh becomes opaque and milky (just as it does when you heat it).Ĭeviche celebrates the natural textures and flavours of good fresh fish, without being quite as hardcore an experience as eating sashimi or sushi. When you immerse fish flesh in these juices, there's an almost immediate visible chemical reaction. It relies, instead, on the chemical properties of citric acids which in the case of ceviche means a delicious marinade of lemon, lime and orange juices. However, I nearly always include some citrus juice in a cold marinade and, as soon as I do that, I am entering the exciting realms of ‘ceviche'.Ĭeviche is a way of ‘cooking' fish, but without heat. Secondly, they're just begging to be tweaked and tinkered with, depending on the ingredients you have to hand.Ĭold marinating can be as simple as tossing chopped or sliced super-fresh raw fish with a few aromatic flavourings and herbs - maybe olive oil, Tabasco, parsley, chopped red onion - and serving it up as a kind of fish ‘tartare'. They share two particularly attractive characteristics: first, they can be excellent make-ahead dishes, which don't rely on split-second timing. There are a couple of classic dishes, both South American in origin, which make the most of these techniques and I frequently turn out a version of one or both of them at home. Alternatively, you can bathe cooked fish in a hot marinade to get a quite different result - usually best with oily fish. You can do it with raw fish, using a cold marinade - a technique that generally works best with white fish. Marinating is an incredibly simple way to add flavour to fish.
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