Acid Tataki

Wowing Myself

I like to experiment with variations and fusion cuisine. Luckily, this works more often than not. Otherwise, my family would probably groan every time they saw something unrecognizable on the plate. One of my most recent spectacular failures was pasta in a thick mushroom cream sauce. The sauce was delicious—cremini and porcini mushrooms in a chicken stock reduction with cream and sherry and a sprinkling of roasted ricotta—but, well, not wanting to be too indelicate, it looked like an unhealthy bowel movement. I'm still trying to figure out how to make that one look like food.

Last night's experiment was more fortuitous. In fact, it was the best success I can recall in quite a while. Even for a success, this meal was pretty amazing, especially for a first time creation. Usually, I try to keep my mouth shut when I serve something new. I want to hear my wife's reaction, and I don't want to unduly influence that reaction by presenting a possibly contrary opinion. Last night, though, when I put that first bite in my mouth, I just couldn't help myself. I was stunned. I was wowed. I couldn't even give my usual, non-committal, "Doesn't suck." Autonomically generated by a beautiful balance of sweet, tart, salty, spicy, creamy, and meaty flavors—before I'd even finished the first bite, came the astonished words, "This is perfect." My wife agreed. Dinner disappeared rapidly.

It's exciting as hell to get one right on the first try. It's even better when "right" is sensual to a nearly orgasmic degree.

Earlier that evening, I'd had one of those little epiphanies that makes the experimentation worthwhile. Like many such creations, this one was inspired by more or less equal parts happenstance and cravings. I arrived at the market with a vague notion of dorado or wahoo with mango salsa. I had already picked out the mango, hot red chili, sweet onion, limes, and a bunch of cilantro for the salsa when I noticed that the greenskin avocados are in. We only get those for a short time in the latter half of the summer. As a rule, I don't have much use for greenskins. They have a watery texture and less creamy richness than Hass and fuentes avocados. They are sweet, however, and mild enough that they can pair well with delicate seafood dishes. In the past, I've served greenskin halves stuffed and heaped with chilled crab salad or tuna poke.

So, not wanting to miss out on the greenskins, I grabbed a couple, thinking, hey, I can always serve them tomorrow. When I got to the fish counter, however, I found that the dorado, wahoo, and kona kompachi weren't too impressive. The dark spots on all three were brown around the bone, so I knew they'd been out on the ice for quite a while. The wild caught sockeye salmon, on the other hand, was a glistening unbroken scarlet, and the yellowfin steaks looked like sashimi waiting to happen. So, okay, I thought, salmon and tuna poke in avocado. I bought enough to prepare poke for the two of us (my stepdaughter is visiting Daddy in D.C. this month), and then I noticed the king crab. They had a big pile of five-inch king crab leg segments at the incredible price of $10 per pound. They're frozen and would keep for a while, so I bought a couple pounds of king crab.

As I thought through the ingredients in the cart, I began to realize that I had two slightly contradictory ideas going in my head at once: I wanted to do a poke with the tuna and salmon, but I wanted to use mango salsa. I could taste it. I even had an idea how it would work. This dish is a ceviche/poke hybrid. Ceviche is a citrus-pickled seafood, often mischaracterized as chemically cooked seafood. Poke is a raw fish salad, typically dressed with salt and sesame oil. The result of the hybrid is like a chemically seared tataki.

Stuffed avocados with mango salsa young ceviche

dramatis personae
one mango, diced
one tablespoon sweet onion, minced
one tablespoon hot red chili, minced
two tablespoons cilantro leaves, chopped
juice of two medium limes
sea salt to taste
one third pound tuna, cubed
one third pound salmon, cubed
one third pound king crab meat, cubed
one tablespoon roasted sesame oil
one large greenskin avocado

preparation notes

Mix the mango salsa, onion, chili, cilantro, salt and lime juice and set it aside. Normally, two limes would be too much liquid for this much mango salsa, but for this application, you need the extra liquid to coat the fish.

In a separate bowl, combine the fish and crab and coat it with the sesame oil. To avoid damaging these delicate bits of seafood, I recommend mixing with your hands. The sesame oil, in addition to being mighty tasty, will keep the lime juice of the salsa from penetrating too rapidly.

Immediately before you are ready to serve the meal, split one large greenskin avocado and remove the pit. Do not damage the skin, but cut out any brown bits and use a knife tip to remove any obvious brown fibers (they'll get stuck in your teeth). Thoroughly mix the fish and crab into the salsa. Spoon this young salsa into the avocado halves and mound enough to cover the avocado flesh.

Serve the avocado halves with spoons. When it gets to the table, the outside of the salmon and the edges of the tuna will just barely have begun to pickle. The trick of eating this dish is digging in to get a bit of avocado in every bite. You'll want to bring the remaining ceviche to the table in a separate bowl so the diners can refill their avocados. Trust me, you'll run out of stuffing before you run out of avocado.

The one element this dish does not have is crunch, so you might want to serve a crusty bread as a side.