Today, lime or lemon is usually used (an influence of the Spanish conquest), and the ceviche as we know it also wears the influence of Japanese culinary traditions on its sleeve, which isn’t surprising considering that Peru has the second largest Japanese immigrant population in South America outside of Brazil. The origins of ceviche are said to date back to pre-Hispanic times, when fish was cooked with the juice of a fruit. Some restaurants even deck it out like a cocktail. Usually, it’ll have some fish bits and corn in it, but the milk is the main event.
If you’re game for that, and you want more of this tiger’s milk, you can also order it in its own glass.
But you get used to it, and I’ve learned to finish it up the way the Peruvians do: by picking up my plate and downing the “milk” when I’ve done quick work of the rest of it. The liquid looks innocuous, but in fact has a sharp, fiery zing to it that caught me unaware the first time I tried it.
The citrus marinade is called leche de tigre - literally, “tiger’s milk”, for its milky colour when mixed in with the fish. The fish chunks in the best ceviches I’ve tried are almost crisp on the outside and tender on the inside without being chewy, so you can bite right into each morsel. It’s “cooked”, so to speak, by the acidic marinade of lime juice, onion, salt, pepper and ají (chilli), so the flesh has a slight firmness and takes on an opaque colour. You might mistake the fish to be raw, but it’s not strictly so. “Ceviche” most commonly refers to ceviche de pescado: basically a cold fish “salad” served with onions, boiled choclo (a white-coloured corn that is larger, chewier and starchier compared to sweet corn), lettuce and sweet potato (sometimes substituted with yucca or plantain). This is the most refreshing thing on the Peruvian menu. Ceviche de pescadoĬeviche is usually served with white fish like sole or seabass, but the ceviche I had at Detras de la Catedral in the city of Huancayo came with trout from the breeding farms in the surrounding Junín region. But if you’re just in Lima for a couple of days and want to sample the “new” Peruvian cuisine, try Gaston Acurio’s Astrid y Gaston (Peru’s most famous chef’s flagship) or Virgilio Martinez’s Central, and the Japanese-infused Maido - and make advanced reservations. A note, however: I enjoy the fancy versions of Peruvian food in London as much as the next person, but in Peru I mostly went for unvarnished, hearty fare. If you’re one of the as yet uninitiated, I think this is a good way in, and the best place to try everything is in Lima, so don’t rush through in your haste to get to Machu Picchu. For all the emphasis on ceviche, though, there’s so much more to Peruvian food, considering the Chinese, Japanese, African and indigenous influences that have made it what it is, and this list of just ten staples barely scrapes the surface. There aren’t just more Peruvian restaurants opening up, but ceviche has also become a fixture in many upscale international restaurants, making it the undisputed ambassador of Peruvian cuisine. Peruvian food has been gathering something of a following around the world, especially in London and New York. So here are some suggestions - including, I’m afraid, guinea pig. I’m not a foodie-litist, but it baffles me when anyone tells me they don’t enjoy Peruvian food, and I wonder if it’s because of the sheer variety on offer that they don’t know where to start.
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