Now your cooking with acid!

Wednesday nights for me are a time to relax on the lake while repeatedly keeping myself from drowning.

I am a white water kayaker and as practice for those times when the river says "you can't float right side up now" there is the activity referred to as an Eskimo Roll.

I meet up with other like minded nut jobs and we take turns flipping over and then righting ourselves, or we spend unbelievably long 30 seconds upside down underwater wondering if someone will come rescue us before we decide to swim.

All of this boat rotation causes much hunger, so we gather together on the shore after such antics along with our flat water brethren and we eat. It's a pot luck dinner that can go either way, Feast or famine . It's a roll of the dice.

So knowing that I would be floundering in lake water Wednesday then chowing down with my friends I stopped in at Publix and picked up a few tidbits to make one of my favorite summer dishes.

Ceviche.

Turns out I have been butchering the pronunciation and spelling for a long while calling it sir-viche. Now I am not sure how to say it so I am just gonna drop the r until someone that speaks Spanish corrects me.

The seafood chosen for this recipe need not match the list below. Just make sure that it is as fresh as you can get. Not fresh seafood is not yummy.
Conch is not a common item in Nashville but Publix in Goodletsville has it, the guy will have to thaw some for you but they gots it. K&S World Market on Nolensville Rd might have it as well.

4 oz deveined shrimp peeled, 25/30 count  10-12 shrimp cut into 2 or 3 pieces each
4 oz bay scallops or 4 oz sea scallops cut into ½ inch dice
8 oz conch sliced 1/8 inch thick slices
1 large Grouper fillet approximately 12 – 16 oz cut into 1x1x ¼ inch thick slices
4 smallish calamari 4- 6 oz – bodies sliced into ¼ inch rings and tentacles split in 2
4 oz fresh Bing or black cherries – pitted and quartered
1 lbs cherry or grape tomatoes
½ a medium red onion sliced into wedges
¼ cup chopped cilantro
1 oz sun dried tomatoes - julienned 
1 large or 2 medium gloves  garlic mashed into a paste with the side of a knife
¼ tsp red pepper flake
dash or 2 of hot sauce – I like habanero based sauces. Lots of flavor without adding as much vinegar as the average pepper sauce.
Juice from 2 oranges  about ½ a cup
Juice of 8 limes
Juice of 6 lemons
Salt and pepper to taste just before serving.

Mix everything in a bowl and refrigerate for at least 3 hours before serving.

Alternatively reserve the conch until 15 minutes or less before serving as it tends to toughen up the longer it “cooks”. Technically the seafood is being “denatured” not cooked but the end result is the same.

I didn't take any pictures today but there are bazillions of pics on the web. Google returned 1,630,000 hits and Food Network has 71 recipes...

So my best advice is chose firm, non oily, white fleshed fish, - grouper, tilapia, sole, snapper etc etc. Use only fresh citrus juice. Dress it up with spices you like.

Cheers

Chris