Snapper Ceviche with Cucumber and Seaweed

The hallmark of Peruvian leche de tigre (“tiger’s milk”) ceviches is their umami, which smooths out the harshness of the fresh lime juice that “cooks” the fish. Tiger’s milk is a savory, milky broth made by simmering fish bones and trimmings with aromatics and blending that with some of the trimmings, plus a little lime juice and salt. Most home cooks don’t have easy access to fish bones, so we came up with a analogous method that inspired by Japan: Use dashi in place of tiger’s milk to smooth out the lime in a ceviche and add umami. The advantage is that dashi can be made in about 10 minutes, and you can freeze the rest or use it to make quick miso soups at lunchtime.

READ: It’s the summer of ceviche! Here’s how to mastermind a great one

READ: Summer of Ceviche, Part 2: Two ways to let umami take your ceviches to the next level

We also also borrowed a trick for making raw onions less harsh from Ecuadorian ceviche tradition called desflemado. To do this, toss sliced onions with salt, cover with hot water, let it sit 5 minutes, drain and rinse. Voilà: softer-tasting onions.

Finally, because we looked to Japan for the umami inspiration, and because there’s a long tradition of Japanese influence on Peruvian cooking — what’s referred to as Nikkei cuisine — we thought it would be fun to push that a bit, include wakame seaweed and finish it with furikake — a Japanese seasoning mix made with sesame seeds, nori, salt and peppers. Cucumbers are at home in both Latin America and Japan, so including them made sense as well. We loved the result.

We used red snapper from the Gulf for this ceviche; you could also use sea bass or other firm-fleshed white fish.

Note about the safety of raw fish

FDA guidelines stipulate that any fish other than tuna species (including bigeye, yellowfin, bonito/skipjack and bluefin) and farmed salmon must be frozen before it’s safe to consume raw; freezing it kills any possible parasites. However, as this excellent Serious Eats article explains, the risk of infection from raw fish is very low. Personally, I would never eat raw farmed salmon, because of well documented problems in their feed (and I don’t like their flavor.) The phrase “sushi-grade” is meaningless. If you’re nervous about the safety of eating raw fish, it’s best to choose something that’s been frozen.

Serves 6.

Ingredients

2 ounces (56 grams) red onion (about 1/4 of a smallish onion), sliced vertically into thin slivers

2 1/3 teaspoons salt (divided)

1 teaspoon wakame (dried seaweed)