"Don Ceviche" — Sea Bass Ceviche with Sweet Potato by Ceviche

Ingredients

1 large red onion, very thinly sliced
600g sea bass fillet (or other white fish), skinned and trimmed
1 portion of Amarillo Chilli Tiger’s Milk (see below)
A few coriander sprigs, leaves finely chopped
1 limo chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
1 sweet potato, cooked and cut into small cubes (see below)
Fine sea salt

Amarillo Chilli Tiger’s Milk

This is our classic tiger’s milk. It is probably the most versatile and the one we use most often at Ceviche.

5mm piece of fresh root ginger, halved
1 small garlic clove, halved
4 coriander sprigs, roughly chopped
8 limes, juiced
½ tsp salt
2 tsp amarillo chilli paste (see below)

Amarillo Chilli Paste, Makes About 190g

This basic chilli paste works best with Peruvian chillies: amarillo, panca or rocoto. Many chillies can easily be substituted with others without the flavour of the overall dish being totally compromised.

1 tbsp vegetable oil
100g Amarillo chillies, deseeded (frozen or fresh), or use 35g dried chillies, soaked until soft then deseeded and roughly chopped
½ onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed

Method

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Method

To make the chilli paste, put the vegetable oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan. Heat over medium heat and then add the Amarillo chillies and onion. Sauté over a low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring regularly. Add the crushed garlic and sauté for 5 minutes until everything is very soft, being careful to make sure it doesn’t take on any colour. Put the contents of the saucepan into a food processor or blender and blitz until smooth. Store in the fridge in a sterilised jar. Makes about 190g.
To make the tiger’s milk, put the ginger, garlic, coriander, and lime juice in a bowl. Stir and then leave to infuse for 5 minutes. Strain the mixture through a sieve into another bowl. Add the salt and chilli paste and mix well. This will keep for 4 hours in the fridge.
Wash the sliced red onion and then leave it to soak in iced water for 5 minutes. Drain thoroughly, spread out on kitchen paper or a clean tea towel to remove any excess water and then place in the fridge until needed. This will reduce the strength of the onions and help to keep them crisp.
Cut the fish into uniform strips of around 3 x 2cm. Place in a large bowl, add a good pinch of salt and mix together gently with a metal spoon. The salt will help open the fish’s pores. Leave this for 2 minutes and then pour over the tiger’s milk and combine gently with the spoon. Leave the fish to ‘cook’ in this marinade for 2 minutes.
Add the onions, coriander, chilli and the cubed sweet potato to the fish. Mix together gently with the spoon and taste to check the balance of salt, sour and chilli is to your liking. Divide between serving bowls and serve immediately.

Notes

Keep your fish refrigerated until just before using. We recommend using fine sea salt for making any kind of ceviche as it is higher quality than other salts and more beneficial in cold ‘cooking’. With any other kind of cooking with, heat normal table or rock salt is sufficient.

There are over 150 types of sweet potato in Peru with varying skin and flesh tones as well as degrees of sweetness; some are much nuttier in flavour. The best way to cook them is to bake them whole in the oven as you would a potato, although they also make very good chips.

If you are using dried chillies (such as panca chillies), dry roast them in a frying pan for 1–2 minutes and then cover with warm water to rehydrate. It may take several hours but the chillies should plump up almost to the point that they look fresh/frozen. Strain and deseed and you should end up with around 100g of chilli.

If you are using rocoto, substitute half the quantity with sweet red pepper. This is because rocotos are very hot and the flavour needs balancing out a little.

To sterilise glass bottles or jars, wash them in hot soapy water and place in a low oven (150°C/gas mark 2) until ready to use.

As a general rule you can store chilli pastes for up to a week in the fridge. They will keep quite well if you decant into sterilised jars and cover with a layer of vegetable oil. And as mentioned earlier you can freeze them. A useful for tip for freezing is to put the paste into ice cube trays in tablespoon and teaspoon measurements and then decant into plastic bags once frozen.