Sometimes, young Padawan, the yum requires a leap of faith. Trust that if you jump, it will be yummy.
If not for the smiley you would be ceviche by now. Them’s fighting words! :eek:
Here is a recipe for Key Lime pie that references ceviche in the way the limes “cook” the raw eggs. It calls the regular green limes “Persian” limes but says that the pie works equally well with Key or Persian limes.
You should make it for dessert.
Costa Rican ceviche also has cilantro. That can make an enormous difference in taste to any dish.
Wow, you’re all over the place with opinion, aren’t you? Now it has to be a Japanese fusion to be authentic and better than American?
Don’t tell Atomicflea that, it has to be a Peruvian Japanese fusion to be the “best” of Latino culture, because American produce is “sorely lacking” in taste.
Sorry, not trying to be a dick, but it sounds like the girl in the OP is suffering from nostalgia, not a lack of a flavor unavailable outside her country.
We have Key/Persian limes, as well as lemon & lime, which apparently people outside of America can’t even pin down as separate from Limon.
I can’t even comprehend where you derived that from. The point in the OP isn’t to be ‘better than American’, but to be authentic Peruvian.
If you’ve never had produce outside of the states, you probably can’t taste the difference.
It takes more than the limes. The fish itself, the rocoto, even the type of corn we use doesn’t exist here outside of its canned form. Again, the point of the OP is to make it as authentic as possible. That’s hard to do with any native dish outside of the country of origin.
A lot Latino cultures have their origins in parts of what is now America. Anyway even if the American west/southwest didn’t have hundreds of years of history as part of Latin America, transported/hybrid cuisine can kick ass. Just try to tell me that those tasteless ketchup covered crackers they call “pizza” in Italy has anything on ours.
In Venezuela, the round green ones are limones (lemons) and the big yellow ones with the pointy ends are limas (limes).
Although this is not kosher in any country with a ceviche tradition that I know of, ripe fried plantains go great with ceviche.
Hardly a GQ level answer but FWIW, when there are cholera outbreaks, they recommend adding lemon to the water you drink as a last recourse effort to kill pathogens.
I’ve got to agree with **Mangetout **here. Lemon juice has a pH of 2.3; lime 1.8. Stomach acid has a pH of between 1 and 2 (depending on the person, time of day, dilution by food, etc.) So most things that would be killed by stomach acid will indeed be killed by lime juice. But the most common things that make you sick from eating them are things that AREN’T effectively killed by stomach acid. If they were, they wouldn’t make you sick! That includes Helicobacter pylori, Salmonella, E.coli, Shigella, Campylobacter, Listeria, Bacillus species and Vibrio cholerae.
Now, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try cerviche someday. I will. But taking some precautions as to the quality of the fish, the cleanliness of the kitchen and, as **Atomicflea **says, putting the dang dish in the fridge while it cooks, are still important things to do to minimize food poisoning.
Many or most of us have eaten raw oysters, sushi, steak tartare. Some non-trivial subset have done so at home. And not gotten sick.
I’d say take whatever precautions you’d take in sourcing the fish as though you were going to make maki at home, and your odds of illness will be not much higher than if you ate maki at Ichiban Gardens or the food court or wherever.
ETA that parasite infestation among fish is reportedly high in salmon, low in tuna.
Absolutely. I agree, and I generally think the risk of foodborn illness is overstated. I just wanted to point out that lemon, or even lime, juice isn’t going to stop the nastiest of the nasties IF you have contaminated fish to start with.
Only one that I know of, right? Mexico is the only North American Latino country (I assume you’re using the term “America” to mean the United States, because all Latino cultures originate in the Americas). I work with 14 folks from Mexico (I’m a medical interpreter), and they assure me their food is largely a remixing of the same five ingredients (meat, rice, beans, cheese, tortillas) with chiles, so it’s easy to cook. The only thing they get crazy about is mole. Apparently it’s impossible to make good mole unless you’re someone’s grandma and you make it at home.
I actually like Italian pizza better. 
I’m one of those freaks that gets the thin crust with light cheese. Then again, Peru has several Japanese immigrants, and they’ve created a whole alternative Peruvian-Chinese food called chifa that is just delicious.
Missed the window for edit: I didn’t know if someone would bring up Portugal/Spain, which are of course partial originators of all Latino cultures.
My point is that I wouldn’t go to California for Peruvian any more than I would go to Columbia for Peruvian. I’d expect the Mexican food in California to be good, but I wouldn’t expect the Peruvian food to be as good because they never were part of the Incan empire nor do they enjoy the same resources.
Thank you. I was beginning to feel like a germophobe (which I’m not, really).
Maybe I just happen to live somewhere where you can’t take quality and freshness for granted. I would not hesitate to eat fish raw (or in ceviche) if I’d caught and killed it myself. I’d be most reluctant to eat any fish raw that I’d bought in a supermarket.
If you’re lucky enough to have a fish market near you, that would be the way to go. Or a Chinatown for that matter. That’s what I’ve done any time I’ve tried to do sashimi at home. I’m with you on the supermarket – too many middlemen and too much obscurity as to how long it’s been sitting there.
I personally have more confidence in fish bought in a supermarket than in fish bought on a market, in part due to the horror stories mentioned by a co-worker’s son (who is a fishmonger) and in part due to my doubts about an individual merchant’s willingness to throw away fish which is a little past its date (while a supermarket will throw it away without a second thought).
You’re not the only one. Neapolitan pizza is my favorite in the world, with a close second to those coal-fired Neapolitan-American pies you’ll find on the East Coast. I’m not sure what the ketchup-on-a-cracker is describing, as Neapolitan pizza is usually straight crushed tomatoes (nothing like the sweetness of ketchup) and the crust sure as hell ain’t crackery (besides, cracker-crust is an American style of pizza.) Freshness and quality of ingredients is emphasized in an Italian pie. I like American pizzas a lot, too, but if I had to pick one style to eat for the rest of my life, Neapolitan would be it, without a doubt.
Somewhat relevant to the discussion:
Me neither. The one and only pizza I’ve eaten in italy was wild boar and mushroom on a very thin but fluffy bread base. It was very very yummy, as was the horse pizza my friend had. This was in an eatery in Modica, Sicily, where serving someone ‘ketchup on a cracker’ would almost certainly result in a knifing.
In Mexico, “limas” are a different citrus fruit entirely. I don’t know what they are in English, and I’ve never seen one in a Michigan store. They kind of look like lemons, but they’re sweet fruit rather than sour. What we call lemons here in the States are sold as “limones reales” in Mexico. However Sprite-type beverages are marketed as “lima-limón” even though there’s no lima flavor, but rather limón real.
For what it’s worth, “citron” is just French for “lemon”. While the fruit known in English as “lime” is also called “lime” in French, it’s also referred to as “citron vert” (“green lemon”).
Also, the best pizza in the world is in Tokyo.