Ceviche with radish and cucumber salad

Photographer: Emma
Serves 6 as a light entree

It’s nice when the time comes to write about a recipe and I get the time to reflect and share an exceptional food experience.

This memory stems back from only last Friday when we, the blog team were lucky enough to travel to Moeraki and visit Fleur’s Place for lunch. Unassumingly nestled on the edge of a wharf, Fleur’s really epitomises what a seafood restaurant is all about. The menu is dependant on what is seasonal and quite literally, what was just brought in off the boat. To start, a generous tasting plate was placed in the centre of our table. Imagine a large antique platter full of fresh, smoked, cooked and cured seafood and swimming right through the middle, a large salmon, its fillets removed for other dishes but still some sweet smoked flesh remaining on the skeleton for our picking. Sitting in a paua shell amongst the fresh water eel, Conga eel, smoked mussels, sole, smoked blue cod tails and of course the mighty salmon was a raw fish salad – the perfect balance of citrus and creamy coconut.

 

In Fiji it is called kokoda and in Peru it is called ceviche; this recipe takes elements of both and marries the raw fish with a crunchy, peppery salad. We’ve not specified a type of fish for this recipe; just use the freshest fish available to you.

 

INGREDIENTS

For the ceviche:
400ml coconut milk, fresh or canned
500g firm white fish fillets
2 limes, juiced
2 large lemons, juiced
1 tsp palm sugar, grated or chopped
Salt and pepper

For the salad:
½ cucumber, finely sliced
2 radishes, finely sliced
2 spring onions, finely sliced
2 large red chillis, finely chopped
¼ cup fresh coconut flakes (optional)
A handful of baby watercress

METHOD


1. To make fresh coconut milk, place 1 cup fresh coconut flesh in a blender, adding three to four cups of hot water. Blend until the coconut water forms a smooth slurry then pour mixture through a muslin cloth over a bowl. Squeeze out as much liquid as possible into the bowl and discard the flesh.
2. Whisk the coconut milk with the lime and lemon juice and palm sugar. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Cut the fish into chunks, pour over the coconut mixture and refrigerate for 10 minutes.
4. Fold through the finely sliced cucumber, radishes, spring onion and garnish with chilli, fresh coconut flakes and watercress.