We’ve covered a few different ways to preserve or cook salmon, like making gravlax and broiling fresh salmon.

I finally got to experiment with another salmon treatment I’d been wanting to try: Ceviche.

Ceviche is a Central and South American dish, a way to cure raw fish using lime juice, a bit of salt, and other flavors like tomato, onion, cilantro, chilis, and vegetables. It’s a much quicker cure than gravlax; gravlax takes two days, whereas ceviche is cured and ready to eat in three or four hours.

The impetus for this ceviche came from something the guys at Wilson Fish sell at the farmers markets where they vend. They have little bags of salmon bits they call spoonings, the fatty, delicious parts scraped off the backbone after filleting. I use them for coconut milk curries most of the time, but wanted to try something new.

Like salsa, ceviche does not follow an exact recipe.  My recipe was pretty unplanned. Juice of one lime wasn’t enough for the 1/3 pound of salmon bits, so I did two. Salt to taste. Two cloves of garlic chopped fine, half a sweet onion, a large tomato, a handful of cilantro, a lemon cucumber, a few hot chilis. It was what I had in the fridge that sounded like it would go in ceviche. Experiment with other ingredients on your own. Halibut would also taste great (and is a bit more traditional), and so would cod or other white fish.

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Salmon Ceviche

• 1/3 salmon (sushi-grade, very fresh, or pre-frozen good quality and thawed)
• 1 very ripe tomato
• 2 limes
• handful of cilantro, chopped
• 1/2 sweet onion, chopped fine
• 2 cloves or more garlic, chopped fine
• 1-2 hot peppers, chopped fine (hold the stem and use a scissors to cut into your bowl, to avoid getting oil on your hands)
• 1 lemon cucumber
• salt to taste

1. Chop salmon into bite-sized pieces.

2. Chop all other ingredients fine.  Combine with salt and lime juice.

3. Refrigerate at least 3-4 hours or overnight.
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