Simplifying Raw Fish: Ceviche, Crudo, and Sashimi

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Ken Oringer, and we're at Toro, New York City, and I m the chef/owner of a bunch of restaurants, Toro in New York, soon to be Toro on Bangkok. We have the original Toro in Boston, then we have Uni in Boston, and we have Coppa in Boston. Today, we're going to be teaching you mastering fish at home from simple sashimi to crudo to ceviche. I encourage everyone's creativity, and all I want to do is teach you how to have fun, not be intimidated by cooking fish at home, especially raw fish, and to share all your photos with me, so not only could I have new ideas for the restaurants, but I can be inspired by where you, guys take this. So, some of the skills that you will take from what I'm teaching you today are the head to tail of the fish, how to not be intimidated by buying whole fish, how to cut fish, butcher fish, and how to have everything assembled as if you're a sushi master. The great thing about working with raw fish at home is you don't need any prior experience, any knowledge, just larcy of the freshest fish. I can teach you how to do everything. Cooking to me is so simple and so gratifying because it's all about being with people that you love, having fun, and using your creativity. So, I will take all the mystique out of it. All you have to do is watch, listen, have a knife, and have some great fish and the rest is easy. The great thing about this class today is each dish, no matter how experienced you are, or how inexperienced you are, it will take no more than 15 minutes to 30 minutes, all depending on how much knife work you want to do to be creative, and feel free to improvise and just use your imagination. 2. Getting Started: How to Shop for Fish: So, what to look for in fish. So, basically, this tuna that we're going to be making simple sashimi out of. When you get tuna, you want to be able to get the largest piece possible for the group size that you have. So, if you're cooking for 10 people, you want to be able to get, say a three pound chunk of tuna. It's better to get the larger piece, the nicer logs that you'll be able to get for sashimi, which is this, what we call these are logs. So, what this is now as you can see is, you want to look for something that is not slimy. You want to look for something that has a bright red color. You want to look for something that has very little smell, if any. You also want to look where you can see over here that it has a really dense pattern to it. Because if tuna has a little strata through it, sometimes it means that it's been mishandled, and it's been bounced around a little bit. So, you want a very tight and compact, and that's what this piece looks like right here. So, tight, compact, bright red color, and then you want to be able to have it, if they're not in exact logs, maybe they're in a piece like this. That's where we're going to just cut them into sashimi style logs, where you can basically slice it and be able to eat it in one to two bites, depending on how big your mouth is. Mine is big, so I love nice big thick slice of sashimi. Then, after the tuna, what we're going to do is show you, this is a whole fish, and this is the intimidating part for most people, is to get a whole fish at home. It's not necessary to get the whole fish but if you really are up for the challenge, there's no better way to eat fresher sashimi. Because what you can look for is bright eyes. So, you can see here, the eyes aren't cloudy, they're not murky. The eyes are really crystal clear. You want to look for a fish also that is not dry. So, you could see this fish is wet, the skin is very firm when you press it. All its fins are still on, so you know that it hasn't been beaten up a little bit. You also, again, want to smell it. It should have no smell and no slime. If the fish does have some slime when you get a whole fish, because a lot of times, when you get a really fresh fish, whether it be in Rigor Mortis or if you just catch it, a lot of times it's almost like a sweating mechanism. So, what you want to make sure you do is, if there is slime, or you look it and the eyes are crystal clear, the gills, here the gills been cut out, but you want to look for red gills. But if there is some slime on it, just rinse it under cold water and put it in some ice, and then you can rub the slime off. So, the slime is not the reason for a bad whole fish sometimes. Sometimes it can be the freshest fish will have some slime on it. Then, you can see on both sides of the fluke here, you can see how clear, again, the white side is. So, this is a fish that's been treated beautifully. It's not bruised up. Sometimes you'll see almost black and blue marks, or some gaffe marks where sometimes there's been a hook or something inserted into it, and rips the meat open. So, you want something, again, that's very smooth, very firm. You could see that there's no give whatsoever when I'm pushing in the fish. That's for the fluke. Then we're going to be making, what I love is, again, especially depending on where you live, to get live seafood. These are live scallops. If you live on the coast, whether it be in Maine or Boston or New York or San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, lot of times you can get live scallops if you ask. Sometimes it takes maybe two or three days ahead of time just to give somebody the heads up. But live scallops are the easiest thing, it's easier to shuck than an oyster. Clams are very difficult to shuck. But again, all you have to do is ask for live scallop, and if you can't get a live scallop, get the largest scallops that you can get and just ask for divers sea scallops. That means that people are diving into the water to pick up these scallops, that they're not generically pulled out by nets or things like that, where the scallops can sometimes be at sea for five days or six days before they even come back into land. So, these are people that dive in, pick them up, bring them in, and they're called day boat scallops. So, the day that they're caught, the date that people are on boats are when they will bring live scallops or the freshest, the most delicious scallops in from the market. Again, with these oysters, we're talking about sashimi and fish today, but oysters, easiest and most delicious way to prepare any kind of a crudo, a sushi and then you can also eat them as a really delicious ceviche just by putting a simple vinegar or citric acid sauce. So, again, even if you're intimidated by any of these, at least try this with oysters. Then with the tuna, a lot of people ask frozen versus fresh. It's funny because in Japan, all the best tunas that you get, the Otoro, and the Chutoro, and those huge, 500 pound frozen blocks of tuna you can see Tsukiji market in Tokyo, are all frozen. So, don't be intimidated by frozen tuna, but just make sure again, that when you're looking at it, and you defrost it very slowly, sometimes over a period of a day or two, in your refrigerator, always. Never defrost fish at room temperature, and never run water over it because that will definitely bruise it and the fish is so porous, it'll be like a sponge and it'll absorb all that water and take all that beautiful texture and flavor out of it. So, frozen is fine. Just make sure, again, you're buying it from a reputable person. Just make sure that you're defrosting it in your refrigerator, wrapped in plastic wrap so it doesn't dry out, and should be no problem whatsoever. 3. Sashimi: Simplicity is King: So, what we're going to do is start with the simplest dish that we have, the tuna sashimi. Again you can see now, it's beautiful, dense, bright red piece of tuna, and you line it up pretty much parallel with the way that you're standing with your cutting board and it's very easy. I like to lead with the cutting board being like the ruler that will line things up for you for sashimi because the Japanese are very precise in how they cut things. So, if you're going to have it straight because sometimes if you have at an angle, if you have it this way or that way, a lot of times you're kind of moving around without the confidence that you necessarily need. So, here, it's very simple because it's almost like when you have a paper cutter and you're putting paper and then you're cutting it, you have everything lined up and all you have to do is go down and cut. So, you shouldn't be intimidated by using a knife or if you have a small knife that's fine too, but just have it lined up perfectly, and then if you have to you can always move a little bit too. Sometimes if you're off balance, if you're again intimidated, you're like, I don't know how to slice something thin enough or I don't feel comfortable getting them consistent. You can move your body too and you can either slice it on the right side, you can slice it on the left side of the tuna log and you can pretty much just use the cutting board as a guide for keeping it straight. Okay. So, with tuna, it can range from lean to fat. Again the fattier the tuna, the more expensive it is, and that's called sometimes a tutoro or the total of the fish. So, sometimes the fatter the fish is, the thicker you can pretty much get away with cutting it, and the leaner the fish which you'll see later on where we're working with fluke or with scallops, which literally have no fat, the thinner you want to slice that because they can be a little bit chewy and it rips and it can be a little bit tough if you slice it too thick. So, with this tuna now especially for sashimi, I like to slice it a little bit kind of on the thicker side and you could start. I'd like to start with the bottom of the knife and come all the way through. So, the bottom of a knife and a lot of times I tell people to pretend that you have a razor blade in your hand, and just let the knife do the work. So, if you have a sharp knife which you should, again it's an essential for working with fish is to have a sharp knife. What you want to do is start at the bottom and you don't have to press and jam it down because that'll ruin again that delicate texture of the fish. Just want to very gently let the knife do the work and just press through almost like when you're cutting butter. I think of it the same way as when you're cutting butter is you don't press through, just go nice and softly through it. So, we're going to take the fish and another important thing when you're working with any cutting of fish is to make sure that you have a wet towel. Okay. A lot of times at a sushi bar, you'll see a wet towel that after each slice of the fish, you should be wiping your knife off because sometimes when you have a dirty knife, when you have pieces of fish still stuck on there, it'll act almost like an abrasion and your next slice will stick where there's something there and the knife as you can see is shiny, it's clean, and nothing can stick to it. So, it has this no stick feel as long as you have it clean. I always keep this pretty much on the corner of my cutting board, so after every slice, I can pretty much wipe off my knife. Okay. So, now, you'll see we'll start over here, and we'll cut straight down, and what I'd like to do also is keeps. Now, you'll see I'm going to wipe off between each slice, and I'd like to keep the slices together because, again, for sashimi, a lot of times you keep the pieces together and also helps where you don't have to have your hands so close where you're worried about cutting it. So, it's one extra piece that you can tuck your fingers in, come down, let the knife do the work and just come straight through to the tip. Okay? So, start here, come down, let the knife do the work and come through to the tip. We'll wipe your knife again, and for sashimi, I generally like to say depending if you're doing an appetizer, an entree, it's good to have maybe three to five pieces of each fish per person, just so that everybody can try again with the wasabi, with the soy sauce, some people might like to just put a squeezed lemon on it, but three to five pieces is generally about one to three ounces of protein, which is sufficient portion of sashimi to start a meal, or if you want to be your main course, sometimes five to six to seven slices depending on how thick will be enough. Okay. So, we'll go one more slice. Again, see how I'm starting, well, with the heel of the knife and then cutting through. Okay. Then, we wipe it, you put your knife down, and then for the sashimi, what we're going to do is take this tuna, and we'll put it on the plate. Again we'll treat it very traditionally. So, with a little bit of soy sauce, a little bit of wasabi, and with the wasabi too, obviously you can use wasabi powder if you like, no problem at all with that, I love it. Then, this right here, again, use your imagination, be creative, especially nowadays there's Asian markets everywhere. So, if you'd like wasabi grade, if you want to give your friends some different things, and say you know what, I love wasabi, let's try something different. This fish is so beautiful, let's try something different, and maybe it'll show off a little bit of a different flavor profile. So, you can get a bunch of different things. So, this right here is called yuzukosho, and this is actually a chilli paste made with Japanese citrus. So, we'll give a little bit of that, and I like to give three to five different condiments for people to have with sashimi. Then, what I also like to do is serve a little bit of sea salt because sometimes people think soy sauce is a little bit too salty, sometimes people have gluten allergies and they can't eat soy sauce. So, a lot of times a little wasabi and a little bit of sea salt is great especially the fish is really, really fresh. Then, this is shiso, and a lot of times also what I love to do is be able to take sashimi, wrap it in a shiso leaf, and put your different toppings on it also, which will give it a really great herbal quality to it. So, we'll press the shiso leaf just along the back over here, and then one last thing that we can do, which is very traditional is serve a little bit of scallions with this. So, take a little bit of scallions. Always make sure when you're cutting fish and using fish that you're not going to cross-contaminate it. So, again it's okay to cut herbs and and things like that while you're cutting your fish if you're going to serve it right then and there, but if you're done butchering your fish, clean your board, have it ready and then you can cut your vegetables and onions and things like that. So, we'll just go a little bit of scallions, and you saw that my knife just does a little bit of slicing work, then we can put a little bit of scallions just over here also. So, people want to have something kind of oniony, they can have that also, which can also cut through the rich fattiness of tuna sometimes as well. Okay. That's our simple tuna sashimi. Okay. So, now that you have the confidence you could see, have a Japanese aesthetic in this, be minimalist, be simple, be creative. You can use any plates of your friends that are potters, what have you, but have fun. Serve it, have confidence in it, and enjoy it. 4. Crudo: 3 Easy Ingredients: So, the next thing that we're going to make is simple crudo. Crudo is the Spanish or Italian word for raw. So, it's basically just any fish, shellfish, can use shrimp if you like. Simply, slice, treat it with a little bit of sea salt, olive oil and that's it. Today, we're lucky enough to have live sea scallops. Again, it's very rare to get a live sea scallop but if you are inspired to cook fish at home or to make raw fish at home, what I recommend anything that you can get in live are closest to life, or caught that day should be what you want to use. So, again don't stick always to the tuna and the Samans and things like that. If you live say in the Midwest and they catch some amazing white fish or things from the lake, again feel free to use whatever is freshest. No matter where you live or whether be red snapper in Florida, or if you're up in Alaska and you want to go with it a wild, wild salmon or any kinds of fish for crudo, the fresher the better. So, here we have live scallops, and all you do when you shuck them is this is just a very simple you can even use a butter knife and that's the beauty of these is that they're so easy to work with. That, you really don't need much. Cap. So, you just run it smooth to the shell here because you don't want to rip. Any of the scallop off. Then a little check what I like to do is because the other half is still attached to the shell by its muscle. What I like to do is, take advantage of that, because it will hold it down and you can kind of rip all the other stuff which you have the raw and you have all this other stuff the belly of the scalp, and you can kind of rip everything out and it'll separate naturally, and then you're left with the scallop. With these with the belly in the ROE a lot of times again as a chef what I like to do is, I'll take this rinse it off under cold water, and then just kind of simmer it with some onions and some garlic and pretty much make like a very delicate scallop. You can use it for miso- so, you can use it again just a very medicinal type broth or some fresh herbs and a little bit of soy sauce and a little bit of chilies. But there's a lot of flavor in these again this just came right out of the ocean. Feel free to just use this just to make a delicate broth. Then right over here, this is called the foot, and what we can do then is just kind of dig your finger in, and you can pretty much take that foot off, because that's tough. Then we'll take. The knife was separated from its bottom shelf. Don't throw the shells out if you are lucky enough to get live scallops, don't throw the shells out because these make amazing plates to play the crudo, and you can wash them in the dishwasher many many times before they fall apart. Beautiful for presentations and cups and I'll show you how it's separated and that's our scallop right here. So, we want to dry just and when you're drying and just be very gentle. Here I'm just using paper towels. You don't have to use a kitchen towel. Just want to dry it gently because again we rinsed it with water and we want to make sure that all the sand is off, but we also don't want it to be wet. Well, when you're cutting something and it's wet, it can slide all over the place and that's when you can cut yourself also because your hands are kind of slimy and wet, your food is kind of slimy and wet. That's why a lot of people I think are intimidated by cutting chicken breast or things like that because they can be slimy and wet. So, again the drier it is, the easier it is to work with. Always when you're working with seafood at home as well, make sure you're constantly cleaning up. So then for the crudo. What we're going to do is very similar technique to the sashimi, but with the crudo the beauty is, it doesn't have to be thick it doesn't have to be thin. It can be whatever shape that you like, because again the leaner the fish which scallops are very lean, the thinner that you should slice it. But with the crudo you're going to put some sea salt in it put some olive oil on it so it can have a little bit of chew to. It doesn't have to be paper thin, it doesn't have to be delicate. It's much more rustic approach. When you think about in Italy, they have a much different approach to raw fish than they do in Japan where they're so meticulous in Japan or in Italy. It's all about the freshest seafood, some really great salt, great olive oil, and maybe a little bit of a squeeze of lemon or something like that and that's it. So, it's just about freshest fish eaten raw delicately seasoned. So, again we're going to have the knife do all the work and just kind of press down, so then as you do each slice, you can kind of place them on the plate. A lot of times when I have dinner parties I'll have the fish lined up on a plate covered with plastic wrap and in your refrigerator. So, this can be done ahead of time as well. So, we're just going to kind of make a pinwheel with these for crudo. It's meant to be eaten as the first thing that you'll have in a dinner party. You can even make sashimi crudo and Savvich is all for the same dinner party and then if you want maybe service salad or some vegetables and it's a really healthy way to entertain, or if you want you can maybe just serve these and then just serve burgers or something very simple if you want also so you don't have to stress about having too much work when you're cooking for friends. So, then when I'm going to do here with the scallop is kind of lay it flat and just kind of cut it in half. Again, we're making the pinwheel here. Then, what we're going to do is, I leave it to the imagination for you guys I'm going to make the simplest one right now. This right here is sea salt, and again with sea salt, the larger the flake the more flavor and texture it's going to have. A lot of times, people think that you can't have texture from salt but it's actually the opposite. When you have something as soft as a scallop or soft as a rough piece of red snapper, a little crystal of salt that really won't melt, will actually give that crunch that that people love to feel when you're eating raw seafood. So, make sure you using any salt that you have. The larger the green, the more texture and flavor it's going to have. But remember it is salt so don't go crazy. Again, when you go to supermarkets where the whole foods or anywhere, they have hundreds of different kinds of olive oil. From Greece, to Lebanon, to Israel, to California, to Spain, to Italy. Any olive oil that you have that has a little bit of flavor is what you want to use okay. So, try and get extra virgin olive oils. A lot of the simple generic olive oils really don't have a hell of a lot of flavor, and when you're serving something with just three ingredients, each of those ingredients has to have a lot of flavor. I'm not saying to serve chili infused or garlic infused olive oil with this, but you want to be able to taste the beautiful characters of olive oil. So, just a little bit of this olive oil. I like to just put a little bit of herbs on this as well. We'll take a little bit of chives, and if you don't have chives you can use onions, you can use scallions, you can use anything you like. Just make sure you don't use too much because again we're trying not to do much with this. Little bit of chives we'll give it a little grind of fresh pepper, and that's a simple crudo. If sometimes you're like you know what. It might be a little too simple for me. Might be you know a little bit too bland. Then you could always take a little bit of lemon zest, and if you do like it spicy, you can add a little dash of hot sauce. But again, that's something they've probably not really do in Italy, but you put kind of a little dash of hot sauce on each piece and that's it. It's called crudo. Okay, so with this again when you're using just three ingredients, salt is very important. Be creative. This right here is called black volcanic salt, which again has kind of almost a sulfur type of flavor, but you can use something like that on this. This is Himalayan pink salt. You can take even Nori seaweed, and you can put this in a spice grinder, with a little bit salt and you can a Norry salt which I love to do a lot of times at home, and you could even take this is right here is fried garlic salt where we take garlic fried up in a pan, put it same thing in a spice grinder with a little bit of sea salt. So, again if you're looking to be creative you can take any herb any spice anything put it in a spice grinder with salt or kind of chop it up with a little salt, and you can get a lot of flavor with that, and then with the olive oil same thing. Use your imagination and go wild. Right here we have different oils that I love to use. This right here is mustard oil which has a real spicy musky bite to it but it's actually really really good if used just a little bit at a time screw the oysters, great with scallops, great with sea urchin. I love life sea urchin with mustard oil, and this right here is pistachio oil, which again it's kind of nutty, so if you're going to use something say like a salmon crudo for instance which has a little bit more flavor than scallops, then you can get away with kind of using pistachio oil, lemon zest, maybe some fried garlic salt something a little bit stronger also which can really give a lot of different flavor profiles, that make something as simple as some slice raw fish really really delicious. So, I encourage all students experiment, find what you like, and again with the crudo, go wild. Anything you want to put on here, any kind of salt, any kind of oil, any kind of herb, a little bit of citrus zest, a little bit citrus juice, chilies, tie chilies jalapenos, whatever. Go wild. Take pictures. Send them over. Would love to see you guys do. 5. Ceviche Prep: Filleting a Fish: Now for the Fluke, Ceviche. Okay, so again, with the fish, as I mentioned earlier, it's important clear eyes, very firm, shiny skin and what we're going to do now is to cut off, we're not going to fillet the whole fish. I'm going to show you pretty much how to cut off a fillet, and then I'm going to show you what to look for when you get it from a fish purveyor if you so choose to do it that way. So, we're going to cut, just blow the head and there's kind of an imaginary line on a Fluke where you can pretty much cut right down the middle. So, there's almost four quadrants to the fish. Again, this fish it is not scaled, so make sure again that you're going to rinse your knife to make sure that you don't have scales in the fish and then what you're going to do is keep your knife flat and follow the bone structure of the fish. Using just the tip of your knife, start at the head and then go down to the tail, rinsing your knife to make sure you have no scales. In the restaurants, we will scale all the fish before we filet it. Then as you can see, I'm just using the tip of my knife, I'm kind of peeling the fish away from the bone. A lot of times people will make the mistake of trying to cut too much. All you want to do is use the tip of your knife and see I'm using my fingers and peel it away from the bones and take your time. A lot of times, people tend to rush when they are filleting fish. It's very soft flesh, the Flukes, so you want to really take your time and make sure that your knife cuts are calculated, that's very again, gently peeling it away. Again, and you could see as I'm starting to pull it away, that we've hit that center line and then we can just makes sure that we cut around that collarbone, and we have our fillet of Fluke. Always keep it flat when you fillet it because if you bend it, it can break the flesh which is pretty much less than ideal because it kind of, then you can't get nice slices because it's going to rip itself. Again at this point, this is the way that I like to buy fish if I'm cooking at home, to get the fillet on the skin, okay? Because that way you can tell again if the skin is really firm, if the skin is shiny, if the skin pretty much adheres really tightly to the fish, you know that it's fresh. I'm going to show you how to skin the fish now. We're going to start right near the tail and we're going to cut down but not into the skin. So, you want to cut straight down and we could see here how we've cut into the skin but not through the skin and then you want to turn your knife parallel. This is very easy and you could see now how we turn our knife parallel, how the skin is starting to separate from the fillet, and then you want to go on back and forth sawing motion and see how I'm pulling this, so you want to pull the skin on back and forth sawing motion, just kind of pulling the skin as you're cutting. Oops, okay. Then the skin comes off and you can see there's not a lot of meat on here, so you want to just make sure, that's why your knife is completely parallel and use your cutting board again as a guide to keep it flat. Then we're just going to clean up our fish because we have a little bit of these thin pieces over here that we're going to cut off, which actually this makes good Sashimi, a lot of Japanese will eat the Fluke fin and a lot of times you could even cook it. It tastes really, really kind of juicy, gelatinous piece of fish. Then you just want to rub your fingers over the top to make sure that you didn't miss any bones or any scales. There we have our Crudo, Sashimi or in our case now, Ceviche ready piece of Fluke. 6. Ceviche: "Cooking" with Citrus Juice: For sashimi, we talked about fat contents versus lean. In ceviche, because we're marinating things every ceviche is marinated with an acid which is basically cooking the fish. So, a lot of times when people like, "Oh, I don't like raw fish, I can't eat raw fish." Ceviche is a great starter, because it's actually cooked and the acid through chemical reaction is actually cooking the proteins in the fish, firming it up and it's also getting rid of a lot of bacteria which sometimes people in countries whether it be Mexico or Peru or anywhere in South America where they eat a lot of ceviche, a lot of times that acid will kill a lot of bacteria, when people sometimes don't have a lot of refrigeration or things like that. With ceviche, you can cut it up into cubes, you can cut into slices, you can cut it up into thick slices, you can cut up into thin slices. It all depends how long you want to marinate it for in the acid that we're going to add, whether it be lime juice or orange juice or lemon juice, and it all depends again how fresh you want it to tastes. So, a lot of times, you can marinate this overnight. Sometimes you can marinate for an hour, sometimes you get marinate for 15 minutes, sometimes you get marinate it for five minutes. So, it all depends on how the texture, if you want it to be more like a raw taste in your mouth, you will marinate for five minutes, if you want to have zero raw quality, you can marinate it even overnight. So, we're going to cut it, and again we want to use the tip of your knife and we're going to cut pieces, that are about this thick. Okay. Because, I like to do it, I like to have them a little bit on the thicker side, so that we can marinate it and will still have some chew to it. So, almost like eating a piece of cooked fish, but being raw or in our case raw, but then marinated and cook. Okay. So, we'll put them in a bowl and a lot of times in South America, they'll cut fish into cubes, so you can go into cubes if you like, and if you want to go into cubes, what you can do is kind of square off the fish, cut it in half and then just simply cut it into about half inch slice pieces, and then you can take them, just dice them up, and you can see how fresh this fish is, how firm it is. That's what you want. Again, you don't want anything to be ripped. You want to treat it gently and then we can cut this into cubes, if you want a little bit of a different look. This is going to take onto a marinate, that will really soften it up a little bit. Now, the beauty of ceviche is anything goes. As long as you have an acid, herbs, some kind of chilies if you like spicy, salt, that's all you need. Okay. So, we're going to start with, I like a variety of citrus, so start with some fresh lime juice, and with ceviche also we're going to serve it on a plate. But, you can serve it in martini glasses, you can get creative with presentations, you can serve it in coconut, hollowed out coconut shells. You could serve it in bowls, you could serve it in plates. Again, it's just all depends. I love the liquid from ceviche which sometimes is called Leche de Tigre. Actually, it's a hangover cure a lot in Latin America. Just drinking the juice from ceviche, because it has all the proteins in it and everything, all the nutrients from the fish kind of leached into the juice, and a lot of times after a night of drinking a lot of tequila or in Peru a lot of Pisco or things like that, you drink the juice from the ceviche which is delicious or even put some orange juice. So again, with ceviche, we're using fresh squeezed juices which I think is paramount. If you don't have fresh squeezed, you're definitely going to suffer. You can see already now how, just where the acid is touching the fish, it's starting to turn a little whitish and that's the chemical reaction that we want, that's going to cook the fish. Okay. So then, after the citrus, it's important that we add some salt, here in this case, we're going to add a little bit of sea salt and some pepper, fresh grounds I prefer. So, we have some zest from the orange right here, we'll chop up some of the zest, or throw some lemons zest in also since we put lemon and orange juice already. Okay. We're going to put a little bit of some wasabi around and I like spicy, so put a tiny bit of wasabi in there. So, we're going go a little East-West on this one, and then herbs. So, a little bit of fresh mint, and with ceviche also, because it's going to marinate, the smaller you chop the herbs, the less flavor it's going to have. So, you want big pieces because it's going to marinate in the citrus juice for quite some time. So, you want to make sure that it's big, that it's not going to get lost, you want it vibrant. So, we're going to very rough chop these herbs. So, you see big pieces. Okay. Then, very important cilantro should always, always, always be with ceviche, and again, rough chopped and you can see there's a lot of herbs in here. So, it's important that you have a lot of herbs, almost the same amount of herbs to fish if you like to really bring out some flavors. This right here is the basics of ceviche recipe, so if you want to do nothing else, you have your salt, you have your citrus, you have your herbs, you can leave it at this. If you want to start adding a little more of your style, I said I love tomatoes in here, it really doesn't matter on the cut of tomato. You can slice it, you can dice it, you can skin it. You don't have to skin it. You can use cherry tomatoes. It really doesn't matter. All of it is going to fall into itself and it's a very rustic dish. So, go a little bit of diced tomatoes, onions are very important to ceviche also, so go a little bit sliced red onions, and then I like it spicy so some jalapeno. If you don't like it too spicy the seeds and the ribs are what make jalapeno spicy, so if you don't like it too spicy, you can take the seeds and the ribs out. So, scrape those out. You can marinate this and let it sit in your refrigerator. What I like to do generally, is the morning that I'm entertaining. I'll have all my vegetables ready, and then I'll toss it just after breakfast, and let it kind of sit in the fridge for a couple of hours and then I can have people over for barbecue, usually around 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon, it will be ready to go. But, if you want to do it right in front of guests, it's fun to get everybody involved, when I cook at home is, slice the fish a little bit thinner and then you can have everybody help out chop up some herbs, and everybody can pitch and say, "Well, you know I like red onion. Okay. I like jalapenos, I like mint, I like cilantro, I like basil," and everybody can help you create what you want to with the ceviche. Okay. We have the jalapeno. I love spices, so I am going to go a little bit more hot sauce, and I love avocado, so we're going to put a little bit diced avocado. As avocado can fall apart sometimes if you marinate it, so we're going to just put the chunks on the plate while we're serving it. We'll toss this up, that's simple. Okay. Again, when you look at it, you can see it's a little bit dry, not dry, but maybe a little bit more liquid, so we'll go a little bit more citrus liquid. Make sure we have a little more juice, and when you're adding the citrus, you want to make sure that you balance it with salt. A little more salt, just like when you make a margarita. The salt really shows off the flavor of the acid. Okay. Then we can let this marinate, again for an hour or so or we can even taste it now, and see what the texture of the fish is like, what the flavor is like. Very, very important you always taste before you serve it. Man, I love ceviche, and this have been marinated for no more than five minutes and it's ready to serve. So, presentation wise, we're just going to go right on top of our avocado. Make sure we have the juices, pour the juices right on, a piece of tomato, and that is ceviche one-o'-one. 7. Wrapping Up: So there you have it, we pretty much went from head to tail. We went from the simplest sashimi to crudo, to cerviche. And I encourage all of you to put your creations on the project gallery. Because to me, creativity is everything and I love to see people's personality in their cooking. So feel free, looking forward to seeing all of your creations. Don't be intimidated and just have fun. Thank you so much. 8. Hungry for More?: