Four-Citrus Scallops Ceviche with Cucumber
Since going back to work, I’ve slowed down on the cooking front, and the blogging front. Luckily I am still on pace to reach the goals I set out for myself this year. Most recently I cooked a scallop ceviché from a recipe I found in ‘The Great Ceviche Book’. I was out with D and J years ago when I tried ceviche for the first time and I really love the stuff. So much, that I bought the book for my iPad and tried out a recipe. I picked what I thought was a simple one, but it turned out to be more complicated than I expected. I’ll tell that story in another post when I get around to that particular recipe. Although I enjoyed my ceviche a fair bit, the book has just collected digital dust on my ipad until I reopened it to satisfy this year’s cooking goal.
This time I chose to work with scallops. That’s a really expensive choice when you live in Doha. A fresh scallop over here costs about $4CAD, and I was cooking with 9 of them. One of the things that I find challenging when I cook in Doha is that I usually wind up going to three different places searching for the ingredients for any given meal. This time was no different, RS and I went to Monoprix, Carrefour and Al Meera before finding everything we needed. This added an extra 2 hours to the evening. When we got home we realized we had picked up parsely instead of cilantro. But, by that point neither of us were will to make another trip out so we decided to make the scallop ceviche without it.
Four-Citrus Scallops Ceviche with Cucumber | |
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Ingredients
Line a baking sheet with wax paper and place the scallops on the sheet and cover with plastic wrap. Place the scallops in the freezer. They will need at least an hour to partially freeze so they can be sliced later. While waiting for the scallops, prep the ingredients, starting with the grapefruit. Cut it in half and get juice from one half and set aside. For the other half, set the grapefruit flat on the cutting board. Slice the grapefruit from the top to the bottom, removing the all the rind and the white pith without cutting too deeply into the flesh of the grapefruit. Next, run the knife along the inside edge of each section of the grapefruit to separate the membranes of each section from their flesh. The flesh should separate now, but you may need to cut along the centre to finish separating each section. Cut each section in half and place in a non-reactive bowl. The remaining ingredients can be prepped as described in the ingredients list and set aside in non-reactive bowls. Once the scallops are partially frozen, remove one from the freezer and slice it thinly and repeat until all the scallops are sliced. In a non-reactive bowl, toss the scallops in lime juice and salt. Refrigerate for an hour. After the hour has passed, add the grapefruit, lemon, and orange juices to a clean non-reactive bowl. Remove the scallops from the fridge and drain the lime juice. Fold the scallops, grapefruit sections, cucumber and half of each remaining ingredient (green onion, chives, cilantro) into the juice mixture. Divide into 2 or 3 portions and use the remaining green onion, chives and cilantro to garnish. |