Ceviche will save us all

The following story anticipates an extract from "Manuale di sopravvivenza amazzonica per signorine di città", a book collecting stories from Peru by Sara Porro, Edt editore. A clear headed and fun text so we can introduce the guest nation at Identità Milano 2016, Peru. The author will present the book on Tuesday 8th March in the Auditorium, at the end of the cooking lessons by Mitsuharu Tsumura, the guys from Pacifico, Sanjay Dwivedi and Virgilio Martinez.
 

Over the past few years developed an obsession for ceviche. Since I mostly write about food, every December I’m assigned some article on the new trends for the new year, and I’ve been making the same prophecy for some time: this is the year of ceviche. It will be the new sushi! Instead, this is never the case, trends are always something without rhyme or reason like cake pops or bread coloured in black, when everyone knows that among the ingredients chefs have been most obsessed with in the recent past (just a few ubiquitous examples: tonka beans, parsnip, salicornia, artic char roe, fermented black garlic, pollen, beetroot) no one is as dull as vegetal carbon.

Ceviche, instead, has what it takes to hit the big time. First of all, it’s delicious: raw fish – you must choose one that is super-fresh and the meat must be firm, like with sea bass, grouper or sole, and not too fat, please no, no mackerel or sardines, tuna or salmon – and then lime juice, hot chilli pepper, chopped sweet onion and coriander: a perfect combination, it’s like coming across tiramisu, a meeting of heavenly flavours which simply cannot get any better.

It’s not just a matter of flavours, however: touch is another essential sense. A perfectly marinated ceviche is like pasta cooked perfectly: it’s a matter of minutes, if not seconds. In the past, ceviche used to stay in its sauce at length: once the fish was caught and cleaned, it was immediately dipped in lime, and this protected it from oxidation, of course, but it also made it as rubbery as a shoe. These days ceviche is marinated a few minutes, fifteen tops: it is prepared à la minute – that is to say when the order arrives in the kitchen. This is just long enough for the meat to become firmer and translucent – if you wait too long, the acidity exceeds the sweetness of the fish, which ends up being almost tasteless. And then there’s the fresh chilli pepper: we often think of “spiciness” as a flavour, when in fact it is a feeling, a painful feeling that is. Shiatsu for the palate: the fine line between pleasure and pain. [...]

At Picanteria in Lima this is how it works: a blackboard at the entrance lists the daily catch and, next to each fish, the same lines prisoners use to count their days of imprisonment here indicate the available specimen. At every order, the waitress erases one with her index: the restaurant is full and they quickly drop. Here you don’t really order a dish – meaning a recipe – but a fish: depending on the fish and its weight you agree on what to do with it during a short negotiation with the waitress.

In our case it’s a brown meagre weighing between one kilo and two, we decide to keep a part for the ceviche – delicious – and fry the rest: the crispy skin crunches under the bites, the fat knots the tongue, yet there are the rings of raw red onion and the exquisite torture of the chilli peppers bringing back balance. I only manage to enjoy a pleasant feeling of fullness when on top of our table the fire alarm goes off, an intolerable sound in terms of pitch and intensity which makes me want to howl as a dog. I press my hands to my years.

The person sitting next to me rips a paper napkin apart, makes two balls and puts them into his auricles then continues to demolish his sopa de pescado without batting an eye. Meanwhile perplexity prevails among the staff. Until one has a bright idea: the waiter leaves the room and returns a few seconds later with a ladder, which he places in between the tables. He climbs to the last step: he’s aiming for the smoke detector. He touches it and feels it around its edge, frenetically searching for a button to calm its wrath. To no avail. The dining room becomes frantic (except for the man with the napkin in his ears). The waiter then removes the howling smoke detector and gets off the ladder with his precious trophy, welcomed as a national hero.