It’s been a while since I posted a recipe. Since June, I’ve been paying attention to calories other aspects of nutrition, so my relationships with food and kitchen experiments have been…well…different. Tonight’s an example. I had seafood civiche and a fruit salad for dinner tonight. Turns out that’s a lot of fruit and and very vew calories, so yay for my diet. I’ll post the civiche recipe here, and the fruit salad another day.
No one is ever interested in the details of another person’s diet, and at best only marginally interested in the results. Still, I’m pleased to report that I’ve lost 45 pounds since June. My goal is to lose about ten to fifteen more, and then I’ll be at the weight I was when I was 40 and in the best shape of my life.
On to more interesting topics. Of course, I’m all about kitchen gizmos. About a month ago, I bough a new Cuisinart food processor that has an attachment that dices fruit and vegetables. At least, that was the claim, and I was willing to try it out. My knife skills in the kitchen usually involve cut fingers, despite wearing kevlar gloves, so I was willing to try anything to stop the flow of blood.
It turns out that the claim it dices vegetables is right! The thing is amazing. Put celery, apple quarters, strawberries, cucumbers, carrots, whatever into the chute, and out comes litttle quarter-inch cubes in the bowl. I works like a magic. There’s almost no food caught in the blade or the machine, and what little there is you can readily recover. Clean-up is easy, too.
The other gizmo I’ve been using lately is a masticating juicer. It’s an after-market add-on designed to use with a KitchenAide stand mixer. As with the Cuisinart, you shove the fruit into the juicer, turn on the mixer, and out squirts juice. The juicer extrudes the pulp in a separate, snake-like stream. As before, the clean-up isn’t bad either. There’s one piece–a wire mesh–that I soak in dishwashing detergent for a couple minutes before scrubbing it, and comes clean.
I’ve used the Cuisinart every night since I bought it, and the juicer two or three times a week. I’ve posted Amazon links below.
- Juicer. (Alas, the particular one I own is no longer available. Any similar one that “masticates” would probably work equally well.)
- Food processor with dicing and spiralizing attachments. Both work well.
Variations on Civiche recipe
There are almost infinite variations to the basic concept, which is seafood “cooked” in a citrus bath and then combined with a combination of diced fruits and vegetables.
If using raw seafood, it’s important that the it be fresh–you don’t cook it in a conventional fashion. You soak it in lime juice instead of applying heat to cook it. The acetic juice “cooks” the seafood, killing any residual bacteria. Tuna changes from bright pink to almost white after ten minutes soaking in the lime juice, so you can see it happening.
I already mentioned I used already-cooked shrimp. I still soaked it in lime juice, since the citrus flavor is a major part of the flavor combination. I imagine you could do the same with already cooked crab or lobster. Instead of tuna, almost any seafood would work. I’ve used red snapper, for example, and Chilean sea bass.
I got my tuna from Sizzlefish. Their seafood is flash frozen within a couple of days of being caught and filleted, and they deliver it to you packed in dry ice. If you live in Oklahoma, it’s as close to fresh seafood as you can get. Of course, I thawed it out overnight in my refrigerator first.
The recipe below calls for tropical fruit–mangos and papaya–but I’ve seen recipes that use fennel and apples instead. Sounds yummy, but I’ve not tried it. I have subsituted cucumber when I couldn’t get papaya.
Finally, you could use a combination of different citrus juices to “cook” the seafood. Lemon juice would add some tang, and orange juice some sweetness, for example. You could even substitute vinegar, but not apple juice because it’s not acetic. I added a touch of Mirin a couple of weeks ago, and it was okay, but not enough to notice.
While I divide this in half and use it as two main courses, you could divide it in fourths and use it as an appetizer. A local restaurant does something similar, and forms the civiche into a cylindrical stack using a mold. If you refrigerator it for a couple of hours and drain the juice before adding the avocado, it’s solid enough to keep the shape. I tried this, stuffing the civiche into a plastic juice glass, putting a salad plate on top, then inverted it. It worked! A great presentation for .your civiche. Of course, it fell apart as soon as I started to eat it.
Tuna and Shrimp Civiche
Materials
- 2-4 limes–enough for one cup of juice. It migh take as many as four small limes
- 4 oz Sushi-grade tuna
- 4 oz shrimp
- 1 TSP sea salt
- 1 Mango, diced
- 1/2 Papaya, diced
- 2 stalks celery, diced
- 1 Sweet Pepper, or 6 small, sweet mini-peppers
- 1/2 Red onion, diced
- 1 Avocado
- 1 Cup Chopped cilantro, or more to taste
Instructions
- Zest one of the limes, then juice both limes. You need at least a cup of lime juice, so if your limes are small, it might take three or even four.
- Put the lime juice in a non-reactive bowl. The bowl needs to be deep enough to completely submerge the seafood.
- Slice the tuna into thin strips, cutting against the grain. Cut the strips to about one inch in length. Salt liberally, then place into the bowl with the lime juice.
- If the shrimps aren't already pealed, peal them and remove the tails. Cut the shrimp into bite-sized chunks and place them into the lime juice with the tuna.
- Cover the bowl with plasic wrap and refrigerate for a minimum of fifteen minutes and for as long as four hours. The acetic lime juice "cooks" the fish, and the pink salmon will turn white. It's important that the lime juice completely cover the uncooked seafood, since this is what killed any residual bacteria and cooks the fish.
- While the seafood marinates, chop the celery. Peal the papaya and the mango, and then chop the fruit into quarter-inch dice. Dice the peppers, onion, and celery. Chop the cilantro. I like lots of cilantro; you might want more or less.
- Once the seafood has marinated for fifteen minutes, add the diced fruit and vegetables to the lime juice marinade. Stir to mix well, again being sure that the seafood is submerged.
- After another fifteen minutes, peal and dice the avocado. Gently toss it with the seafood mixture. Serve in a small bowl. Garnish with extra cilantro or parsley.
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