The Palmerite: Ceviche & Stuffed Salmon....

Yay! My first Food Blog. The idea for this entire blog was to have it be about Palmer, my experience here as well as the food I am cooking. I don't have any pictures of my food so I'm starting to compile some for portfolio purposes. Just in case I can use them for interviews someday.

So today we have a step by step process on how to make Ceviche and how to stuff a Salmon. We still have fresh ingredients from when the last boat arrived. We also get some weird Chilean stuff. Like the side of Salmon you'll see in the second half of this post.

Ceviche is a seafood dish that originated in South America. Peru and Ecuador more specifically. And if you didn't already know, acidity cooks fish. I didn't know this for a while but it is a great tool. So the shrimp, scallops, whatever you put in lime or lemon juice will actually be cooked without the use of heat. Fascinating.

You take raw shrimp...

onions...

and fresh cilantro...

and mix it all together.

I like to add fresh cherry tomatoes, avocado, and fresh limes.

With all the ingredients mixed together, sprinkle kosher salt and cracked black pepper over it...

pour in copious amounts of lemon juice, lime juice and white wine...

and let it sit covered overnight.

Then the next day, uncover it and serve it with a kick ass Cinco de Mayo feast! We made a bunch of nachos, enchiladas, the fixins for a taco bar. And Captn Dave Bardun made his famous fresh tortilla chips. Fun all around.

Also keep in mind that this is just my recipe. There are millions of different ways to make ceviche using a million different kinds of sea treats. I love using scallops as well. They taste like candy. But white fish works best. I'm sure you can use salmon or tuna if you want but I would prefer to make a gravlax for bagels or smoke it.

Speaking of Salmon, Crawfish Stuffed Salmon is next on our list. In terms of food, we get some stuff from the states. We also have a Chilean resupply for the perishable items, freshies, cheeses, etc. The last time they brought some salmon and I was really excited to use fresh fish rather than frozen. But when I saw it I was confused.

Because it was a gutted fish, not fillets like I'm used to. I mean this thing still had the little flippers on it man. Weird. But good! Diane suggested either cutting into salmon steaks or stuffing it. It was not big enough to cut into steaks so I stuffed it instead.

First I made the crawfish stuffing. It's a mixture of crawfish, yellow and green onions, egg, bread crumbs, mayonnaise, various seasonings, and lime juice...