Buried in salsa...

My mom called me a few days before her visit this last weekend with a question:

“How much do you know about halibut?”

My answer was pretty simple: ”Well, I know that it’s a fish… and I know that it’s delish.” What more do you need to know?

Turns out that her neighbor had recently been to Alaska and had a very good fishing expedition and came back with about a hundred pounds of flash frozen Alaskan halibut. He gave some to my mom and she offered to bring it with her when she came so we could cook it up.

Unfortunately, the way that halibut is normally cooked – baked with tons of butter – was off limits to us because my mom has some dietary restrictions that we had to follow. So I came up with two fun ways to cook the halibut. Both ways turned out very good.

Both of the recipes in this case centered around a really simple pineapple salsa, so let’s do that first.

Pineapple Salsa
Makes 6-8 cups of salsa.

- 1/2 whole pineapple, diced
- 1 green pepper, diced
- 1 red pepper, diced
- 1 peach, pitted and diced
- 1 Serrano pepper, minced (optional)
- 1 big pinch of kosher salt

Once you have this salsa made, you have the base for both dishes actually.

Basic salsa

As with most salsa, this guy is mainly good chopping practice. If you’ve never cut up a whole pineapple before, it’s not so hard but I can see why people could be intimidated.

Start by chopping off both ends of the pineapple and then stand it on its end and use a large sharp knife to slice off the rind around the edges. Then chop it in half long-wise and slice out the core. Then just dice up the fruit like you would anything else.

Of course, if you want the absolutely expert way to peel a pineapple, I recommend checking out this video. Takes some skill, but definitely the best way to do it to preserve more of the fruit.

Anyway, once you have everything done, just toss it in a bowl and season it with some salt. The longer this sits, the better it gets!

Good stuff.

A Grilled Meal

For dinner, I wanted to grill some of the halibut. As a side, I wrapped a few sweet potatoes in foil and tossed them on the grill also. These guys need about 40 minutes on the grill so start them way before the fish obviously.

Just a side...

As mothers are inclined to do, when she said she was bringing “some fish” she meant “more fish than four people could ever eat.”

For the four of us I think she brought about 7-8 pounds of halibut.

A huge amount of fish!

I picked out a few of the filets that I wanted to grill and saved about a pound for my ceviche plan the next day.

When it comes to grilling the fish, I kept it about as simple as possible: just some olive oil and a bit of salt. In hindsight, I think I may have added some blackening seasoning or something to give them a bit more of a char from the grill. I had my grilled cranked up to as hot as possible and I didn’t get really great grill marks.

Not the best grill marks, but okay.

That was okay though. More important than the grill marks is the goal of not over-cooking the fish! Halibut is a very tender fish and the last thing you want to do is over-cook it. Depending on the size of your filets and how hot your grill is, your cooking time might vary, but I promise that you won’t need to cook them for more than 6 minutes or so. About three minutes per side was a perfect time for my fish.

If you want to test the fish, just pick one of the fatter filets and see if you can easily flake apart the fish. If it flakes apart, it’s done.

Serve this as soon as possible. I piled on as much of the salsa as possible because it was really delicious.

Really refreshing and healthy.

Next Day Ceviche

As I mentioned, we had a lot of fish, so I kept about a pound of it to use in an appetizer the next day. This was my basic ceviche recipe which also used some of the leftover pineapple salsa.

Halibut Ceviche

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound fresh halibut, diced
2 limes, juice only
1 lemon, juice only
1 orange, juice only
1 1/2 - 2 cups pineapple salsa (recipe from above)
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 pinch of salt
Crackers or chips for serving

Directions:

1) Stir together all ingredients except olive oil. Let sit, covered for 2 hours.

2) Drain off most of the liquid and stir in olive oil. Taste for salt.

3) Serve with crackers or chips.

Mix everything together in a large, non-reactive bowl except for the olive oil. The acid from the citrus and salsa will actually cook the fish. It’s a pretty cool process, but for the dish to be good it’s very important to have really fresh fish. Otherwise the dish will end up being too fishy tasting.

Once everything is combined, let it sit in the fridge for about 2 hours, stirring it every 30 minutes or so. Then drain out most of the liquid and stir in the olive oil. Taste it for salt and serve it with chips or crackers.

The Ceviche!

Believe it or not, we actually used almost all the fish my mom brought!

I guess that goes to show you that moms really do know best.

Last week while I was at the beach with Betsy’s family, popping the question, I made three different kinds of ceviche with Betsy’s cousin, Danny. We were able to find awesome seafood for each version and we used some different ingredients for each one also. I reproduced one of my favorites for this post.

Most refreshing thing. Ever.

There is really only one thing that can make or break this dish: high quality seafood. There is no other trick really. Just make sure that you get really fresh seafood and you’ll be okay. It shouldn’t smell fishy really and try not to use seafood that’s been frozen. If you aren’t sure, just ask your fish guy what fish is the freshest. For ceviche you can use almost any white fish or shell fish so your options are many.

Ceviche

Yield: Serves 2-4.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

1/2 pound white fish or shellfish. In the last two weeks I've made versions with scallops, grouper, halibut, and shrimp.
3 limes, juiced
1 lemon, juiced
1 orange, juiced
1 clove of garlic, diced
1/2 jalapeno, diced
1/4 red onion, diced
1 Tablespoon cilantro, diced
1 Teaspoon fresh ginger, diced (optional)
1/2 medium tomato, diced (catching on to the diced thing?)
1/2 avocado, diced
1/2 mango, diced
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Prep the seafood. If the seafood has skin on it, cut it off.

2) Dice up the seafood into small cubes. I recommend about 1/4-1/8 inch cubes.

3) Add juices to a bowl with the seafood. The liquid should just cover the seafood.

4) Chop all your additional ingredients (garlic, jalapeno, onion, cilantro, ginger, tomatoes, etc).

5) Add it all to citrus and seafood mix (leaving out the avocado and mango).

6) Add a pinch of salt and pepper at this point. Be sure to adjust for salt and pepper at the end too.

7) Let the ceviche sit for at least 30 minutes but an hour or two would be a good idea.

8) Drain out most of the citrus.

9) Add the chopped avocado and mango and mix it all up!

10) Serve with very thin baguette (toasted lightly for 5 minutes or so) or tortilla chips.

First thing’s first, get your seafood prepped.

The specimens today.

If your seafood of choice has skin on it, you’ll want to cut the skin off. Then dice up the seafood into small cubes. You can cube your seafood larger or smaller depending on how hearty you want your final ceviche. Just remember that the larger your pieces are the longer you have to let it sit in the citrus bath. I recommend about 1/4-1/8 inch cubes.

Also, you’ll need to get some juicing happening.

The cooking method.

You could of course use just lime juice or just lemon or just orange, but I like the combo of all three. Then just add your juice to a bowl with your seafood. The liquid should just cover the seafood.

The starter.

I hope you have a sharp knife because we need to chop all of this stuff too.

Then all your veggies.

Add it all to your citrus and seafood mix.

Also now would be when you would add your tomato because that will lend some acidity to the dish. I just forgot to photograph that part. My apologizes. Also add a pinch of salt and pepper at this point. Be sure to adjust for salt and pepper at the end too.

Add in your tomato also. Forgot to photograph that.

So now you need to wait. There’s some slow cooking happening with the citrus and the seafood. Now some people are hesitant to make ceviche with raw shellfish since you don’t actually heat up the shrimp or whatever. If you are really worried about it you could blanch the seafood briefly, but in my mind that kind of defeats the purpose of the dish.

The citrus is acidic enough to kill most things and if you buy fresh seafood it should be fine.

Regardless of what you decide, let your ceviche sit for at least 30 minutes but an hour or two would be a good idea. That will let all the flavors mingle.

There are a few ingredients that are best added at the end, otherwise, they will just kind of fall apart. In my version, this is the avocado and mango.

Some add-ins.

Before you add these things to the ceviche, be sure to drain out most of the citrus. You don’t want soup here. You’re going for more of a salsa consistency.

Then you can throw in your mango and avocado and mix it up!

All set!

For this version I served mine with very thin baguette toasts that I lightly toasted for 5 minutes or so. You could also just serve this with tortilla chips though.

The first time I made this dish I was a bit stressed about it, but seriously it is a no stress dish. If you’ve never made it before and you can get your hands on some fresh seafood, you have to try this dish!