ALIANZA LIMA

Mixed Seafood & Fish Ceviche:

All Peruvians love football. The Alianza Lima football team brings together a mix of players, enriching the way they play. These characteristics have inspired this colourful ceviche, which combines different varieties of seafood and fish.

Instructions

1. Wash the sliced red onion and then leave to soak in iced water for 10 minutes.
2. Drain thoroughly, spread out on kitchen paper or a clean tea towel to remove any excess water and then place in the fridge until needed.
3. Cut the fish into uniform strips of around 3 x 2cm, put in a bowl and sprinkle with a good pinch of salt.
4. After 2 minutes, add the prawns, octopus and tiger’s milk. Leave to ‘cook’ for 2 minutes.
5. Add the cooked choclo or corn kernels, strained onions, coriander, sweet potato and chopped chilli and mix gently with a spoon.

Serve immediately, garnished with finely sliced limo chilli and extra coriander leaves if desired..

Rocoto Tiger's Milk:

This tiger’s milk is much spicier than the rest, thanks to the rocoto, so it works best with strongly flavoured fish and seafood.

Instructions

1. Put a 5mm piece of fresh root ginger, 1 small garlic clove, 50g deboned fresh white fish cuttings, 4 roughly chopped coriander sprigs and the juice of 8 limes in a bowl. Drain thoroughly, spread out on kitchen paper or a clean tea towel to remove any excess water and then place in the fridge until needed.
2. Stir and then leave to infuse for 5 minutes.
3. Transfer to a food processor or blender and blitz until smooth.
4. Strain the mixture through a sieve into another bowl.
5. Add ½ teaspoon salt and 2 teaspoons Rocoto Paste and mix well.
6. This will keep for 2 hours in the fridge.

Basic Chilli Paste:

This basic chilli paste works best with Peruvian chillies: amarillo, panca or rocoto. Many chillies can easily be substituted with others without the flavour of the overall dish being totally compromised.

Instructions

1. Put 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan.
2. Heat over medium heat and then add 100g frozen or fresh deseeded chillies of your choice or 35g reconstituted deseeded and roughly chopped dried chillies, and ½ a finely chopped small onion.
3. Sauté over low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring regularly.
4. Add 2 crushed garlic cloves and sauté for 5 minutes until everything is very soft, being careful to make sure it doesn’t take on any colour.
5. Put the contents of the saucepan into a food processor or blender and blitz until smooth. Store in the fridge in a sterilised jar. Makes about 190g.

Sweet Potato:

There are over 150 types of sweet potato in Peru with varying skin and flesh tones as well as degrees of sweetness; some are much nuttier in flavour. The best way to cook them is to bake them whole in the oven as you would a potato, although they also make very good chips.

Choclo:

Choclo is a large white variety of maize. The kernels have a creamy texture and the flavour is less sweet than the sweetcorn available in the UK. It can be boiled and eaten on the cob or sliced and added to stews and soups, puréed and used in tamales and corn cakes, or air-dried and ground into flour or meal and used in puddings. If you can’t find it, you can substitute regular sweetcorn in all of the savoury dishes.

Notes:

• If you are using dried chillies (such as panca chillies), dry roast them in a frying pan for 1–2 minutes and then cover with warm water to rehydrate. It may take several hours but the chillies should plump up almost to the point that they look fresh/frozen. Strain and deseed and you should end up with around 100g of chilli.
• If you are using rocoto, substitute half the quantity with sweet red pepper. This is because rocotos are very hot and the flavour needs balancing out a little.
• To sterilise glass bottles or jars, wash them in hot soapy water and place in a low oven (150°C/gas mark 2) until ready to use.
• As a general rule you can store chilli pastes for up to a week in the fridge. They will keep quite well if you decant into sterilised jars and cover with a layer of vegetable oil. And as mentioned earlier you can freeze them. A useful for tip for freezing is to put the paste into ice cube trays in tablespoon and teaspoon measurements and then decant into plastic bags once frozen.

Recipe from CEVICHE: PERUVIAN KITCHEN by Martin Morales published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in hardback on 4 July 2013 at £25 or available to pre-order on Amazon.