Sometimes, I like to re-create my vacation in my kitchen. This weekend, I felt like making my own slice of New Zealand in the form of a raw fish dish I had at Aggy’s Shack in Queenstown.
I believe Aggy listed it on his menu as “Raw Fish in Coconut Milk.” Think of it as a South Pacific ceviche. I looked up several recipes and decided to use those as the basis for reverse-engineering my own. I found lots of references to kokoda and poisson cru. The second one seemed to mostly use ahi tuna, where Aggy’s creation seemed like a whiter fish.
Here’s my ingredient list:
1.25 lbs fresh opakapaka (a variety of snapper)
the juice of 6 fresh limes
1 finely chopped red pepper
12 ounces light coconut milk
3 chopped scallions
two cloves (not bulbs!) of chopped garlic
half-cup of chopped cilantro
dash of black pepper
1. Remove any skin from the fish and cube it into one-inch pieces
2. Submerge the fish in the lime juice. Refrigerate for three hours or until fish is white.
3. Remove, combine with other ingredients. You can refrigerate it a bit longer, or serve it immediately.
It pairs nicely with wild rice and a salad. A squirt of Sriracha hot chile sauce also adds some nice heat.
I think mine compared pretty favorably to Aggy’s version. If I do it again, I might add a squirt of soy sauce. Of course, there’s no way I’ll be able to equal his steamed green-lipped mussels.
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Ceviche with coconut milk? Sounds awesome! I’ll have to try that soon, although I’ll probably just have to substitute a regular ol’ Red Snapper.
Raw fish!! You are brave! I can’t even brave sushi :-/ The only kind of seafood I an eat is shrimp. Any form of shrimp, maybe I should try something like this though?
My wife was dead-set against sushi. It took me years to even get her to take a nibble. I took her to one of the best sushi places in town, and ordered unagi (a barbecued eel) and yellowtail sashimi (just a straight-up piece of uncooked yellowtail). She loved the unagi. Then she took a bite of the raw yellowtail, and she has been a sushi fiend ever since!
As far as my recipe in this post, the citric acid in the lime juice actually “cooks” the fish. So it’s not really raw when you start eating it. You could definitely throw shrimp into this recipe.
Have you gone to my archives? If you go a few weeks back, look for the “Can You Survive These 5 Foods?” post!