ceviche

IPA Ceviche Lettuce Wraps

18.07.2013 11 Comments

We tend to feminize or masculinize food. Beer is man food, as is bacon, grilled red meat and bourbon. While tea, lavender, scones and blueberries tend to been feminine. Chocolate seems to be neutral go-between, grabbing it’s gender label once the final product is presented. Chocolate Stout Cake with Maple Bacon Frosting: Man Cake. Chocolate Strawberry Mousse: Girly.

Although I don’t ascribe gender to my food, I can clearly see the lines drawn in the sanding sugar. These daintly looking no-cook treats will fool you like the little vixens they are. One look at these mango and shellfish filled lettuce cups and you firmly place these in the Chick Food category. But with a sharp bite of beer and a punch of spicy heat, they would beg to differ.

Along the lines of my I think now is a really good time to tell everyone minor motorcycle crash story, It’s past time to tell you that alcohol intensifies heat. While there is no way to tell the precise Scoville Units in any given jalapeno pepper, I can tell you that number will be dramatically increase after those suckers have spent an hour soaking in a high ABV IPA. So if you don’t want to turn on the oven, and don’t mind a little capsasin abuse to the mouth, this is a great meal.

If you’re man enough.

IPA Ceviche Lettuce Wraps

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Ingredients

1 lb raw shrimp diced
½ cup lemon juice
½ cup lime juice
1 manila mango peeled and diced
1 tomato diced
½ red onion diced
1 jalapeno diced, seeds removed
¼ cup lime juice
¼ cup lemon juice
1 tsp sriracha
2/3 cup IPA beer
4 heads endive
1 head radicchio

Instructions

Place the shrimp in a small bowl. Cover with ½ cup lime juice and ½ cup lemon juice. Cover and refrigerate until the shrimp have turned pink, about 2 hours.
In a separate bowl combine the remaining ingredients (except the radicchio and the endive), allow to marinate for at least one hour.
Just prior to serving, drain the shrimp, add to the mango bowl and toss to combine.
Scoop a few tablespoons of the ceviche into the leaves of the endive and the radicchio, serve chilled

Notes

For a lower heat level, reduce Sriracha to 1/4 or 1/2 tsp.

IPA Ceviche

21.08.2012 14 Comments

As summer nears it’s inevitable end, it’s not the weather that I’ll miss the most. In fact the leather boots and chunky sweaters of colder days are starting to beckon. The produce, back yard grills, the smell of life and food floating on a late afternoon breeze will be lost in the dawning of fall.

This isn’t a recipe about avoiding the oven, or grumbles of triple digit heat, it’s about enjoying August produce, paired with those Summer release beers and spending as much time as you can in the open air before we’re all forced to head inside, cook with squash, and drink stouts. Which I am already looking forward to.

IPA Ceviche

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Ingredients

1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon
1/4 cup fresh squeezed lime juice
1 1/2 lb raw shrimp shell & tail removed, chopped
1/2 cup IPA Beer
1 yellow onion diced
3 cups tomatoes diced
1 large jalapeno diced, stem and seeds removed
1/2 cup cilantro
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp red pepper sauce such as Sriracha

Instructions

Add the lemon/lime juice and raw shrimp to a small bowl. (Shrimp will "cook" in the juice as it marinates.)
Mix beer, onion, tomato, and jalapeño in a large bowl, allow to marinate in the fridge for at least one hour.
Drain the vegetables and return to large bowl.
Once the shrimp have "cooked," drain and add them to the large bowl along with the salt and pepper sauce, toss to combine.
Serve cold with corn chips.

Watermelon Ceviche

28.07.2011 8 Comments

The last time I had ceviche I was one week into my pregnancy with Tater. We were in New York. A trip that had been planned for months, even before all the fertility goalies were removed and we were officially “trying.” The first few weeks of pregnancy, when it is all just more of an idea, a theory, than an actual BABY, there is a thick fog of impending miscarriage. As if that is the inevitable outcome. You don’t tell anyone outside your very inner circle so that you don’t have to UNtell, “in case…well, you know.” We had gone to have dinner at the apartment of a newly married couple we know. He’s a musician we’ve known since we were kids and she is a doctor we feel grateful to know as adults. We arrive to a beautiful spread of homemade ceviche. I panic. I haven’t been able to do all research. Fish? Some is ok, right? What if this is the horrible, mercury laden trigger that will decimate the theoretical baby growing in my uterus? I gave a frantic look towards Mr. Fits. Casually, he searched Google on his phone without missing a conversation beat, as if just answering a text rather than shieling his unborn theory from poisonous, metal saturated fish. “It’s fine,” he leans over and whispers to me, showing me the phone, “Very low in mercury. They even encourage you to eat this kind because the omega 3’s are good for brain development.” Brain development? BRAIN? I’m growing a brain. It all hits me. I am growing a human. No one can even tell and my guts are making a brain. That was the moment that this theory, this idea, this pregnancy actually started to become a baby, a human Tater. Ceviche will always remind me of that night, and the realization that my pregnancy would end with my beautiful baby being born.

Watermelon Ceviche

3 cups of watermelon, chopped

½ cup diced red bell pepper

¼ cup diced red onion

¼ cup chopped cilantro

2 tbs diced fresh jalapenos, seeds removed

1 ½ cup cooked, chopped shrimp, tails removed

½ cup fresh squeezed lemon or lime juice (or a mixture of both)

1 ½ tsp kosher salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp sriracha

Corn chips and Boston lettuce leaves for serving

Put all the ingredients (except the chips and lettuce) in a large bowl and mix until combined. Allow to chill for at least an hour before serving.