Ceviche - Olympic Food Challenge : Panama

A man, a plan, a canal – Panama! And so we reach the end, the final dish, and like Usain Bolt, this one is a sharp lunge towards the finish line!  Panama had lots of dishes to choose from when I went a-looking, and like a lot of South and Central American countries, there was a preponderance of beef (There's a band name if ever I heard one...) but looking back on the dishes I had already cooked there was a paucity of fish (that will be Preponderance of Beef's first album...) so I plumped for this dish.

Someone asked me the other day how I got into cooking.  Thinking back, I was a pretty terrible cook for the first 25 years of my life - tinned curries, stews and cheap burgers were the order of the day; and then a few of my friends and I decided to do 'Gourmet Night' once a month and push the boat out, cook-wise.  It was great and I cooked more interesting dishes than I had ever done, caught the bug and now here I am, a moderatly amusing food blogger with a black pudding and dumpling obsession

But what does this have to to with the Olympic Food Challenge, I hear you yawn... Well, when I was doing Gourmet Night, there were two notable failures - one, the Sticky Toffee Pudding disaster, has gone down in history (n.b. Sticky Toffee Pudding needs flour in it, or it resembles brown snot; admittedly tasty brown snot, but it looks awful nonetheless)

The other disaster was ceviche, which was made with frozen cod and had the texture of boot leather soaked in lime juice.  And yet here I was again, about to attempt the same dish and make it look (and taste) impressive as befits the last entry into the Olympic Food Challenge.  And guess what, it was rather nice this time!  Having fresh fish is the key it seems, but the length of time you marinade it for is up to you.  Some recipes suggest as little as 2 hours, whilst we did it overnight with good results.

Our Local Olympic Hero is Alistair Brownlee who took gold in the Triathalon!

Also, any thoughts on how you pronounce ceviche will be greatfully recieved (Ke-vee-chay of Se-vee-chee?)

It's been a brilliant 3 weeks of the Olympics (Much to my surprise my cynical heart was hooked from the opening ceremony, right through to the end - also yay Luke Campbell from my adopted home town of Hull getting the gold last night!) and it's been a brilliant 3 weeks of cooking new and interesting things, thanks to Ewan for letting us get involved and Ill sign of by saying I'll be in for the next Olympics as long as I can get a ticket to Brazil and cook from there!

Also, check out the official blog of the Olympic Food Challenge to see what everyone else got up to - there are some amazing things on there...

Ingredients
300g Swordfish Steak
1/2 Red Pepper
1/2 Yellow Pepper
1 Lemon
2 Limes
1tsp Minced Garlic
Fresh Coriander

Method
1.  With a very sharp knife, thinly slice the Swordfish and place in a bowl

2.  Juice the lemon and limes.  Finely dice the peppers and chop the coriander.

3.  Combine these with the swordfish and garlic and cover and place in the fridge overnight.

4.  Serve on crackers with avocado.  Enjoy!