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Aguachile

Raw prawns butterflied and dressed at the table, because the lime goes on working and five minutes is the whole window.

Chicken, Shellfish. Not vegetarian — contains cheese whose rennet the source does not name, chicken, lard, shellfish.

Ingredients

Method

  1. IT IS DRESSED AT THE TABLE BECAUSE FIVE MINUTES IS THE WHOLE WINDOW. Lime juice denatures the protein in raw prawn and does not stop when it looks right. For about five minutes the prawn is barely changed at the edge, still translucent at the centre, and the texture is the reason to eat the dish. By fifteen minutes it has gone opaque and firm all the way through, and by half an hour it is tough and faintly chalky and tastes only of lime. So the prawns sit in a bowl, the lime mixture sits in a jug, and they meet on the table in front of the people eating. Made in the kitchen and carried out, the dish is already past its best when it arrives.
  2. THE PRAWNS ARE BUTTERFLIED AND NOT LEFT WHOLE. Split down the back almost through and opened flat. A whole prawn in five minutes is dressed on the outside and raw in the middle in a way that reads as undercooked rather than deliberate; butterflied, it is thin enough that the five minutes reaches all of it evenly.
  3. THE LIME IS SQUEEZED AT THE LAST MINUTE. Lime juice goes bitter within about twenty minutes of leaving the fruit -- a flat, slightly soapy bitterness that is quite distinct from sourness. In a dish whose only liquid is lime juice there is nothing to hide it behind.
  4. FRESHNESS IS NOT A PREFERENCE HERE, IT IS THE WHOLE DISH. Nothing is cooked. A prawn that is merely acceptable cooked is not acceptable raw, and there is no step in which heat covers for it. If the prawns are not visibly and unmistakably fresh, this is the wrong dish to make with them.
  5. THE CHILLIES ARE BLENDED INTO THE LIME AND NOT SCATTERED ON. Chiltepin are tiny and ferocious, and left whole or chopped they deliver the entire heat of the dish in one mouthful out of six. Blended into the juice, the heat is even and can be judged -- and it is tasted before it goes anywhere near the prawns, because it cannot be reduced afterwards.
  6. The prawns shelled and BUTTERFLIED -- split down the back almost through and opened flat. Kept covered in the fridge.
  7. The red onion and cucumber sliced paper thin and kept in iced water until wanted, then drained.
  8. The chillies blended with the salt and 2 tablespoons of water to a loose paste.
  9. TASTED, and the quantity adjusted. It cannot be made less hot later.
  10. Everything brought to the table: prawns in one bowl, onion and cucumber in another, chilli paste in a third, limes and a squeezer, coriander and tostadas.
  11. AT THE TABLE: the limes squeezed -- 10 of them -- and the chilli paste whisked into the juice.
  12. The prawns tipped into a shallow serving bowl and the lime and chilli poured over, so they are just covered.
  13. The onion and cucumber scattered on and everything turned once.
  14. LEFT 5 MINUTES, no more. The prawn edges will turn pale and the centres stay translucent.
  15. The coriander torn over and served at once, piled onto tostadas, with the liquid spooned over.
  16. Anything left after 20 minutes is past it and should be eaten or abandoned.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Mexico · All recipes