This recipe I did during my first week at San Sebastián, to remember old times. In Spain one eats pickled mussels a lot, usually in a bar or at home and as a tapa; we serve the mussel over a potato chip with its juice and that’s it! Delicious!

A technique that I want to tell you about in this occasion is how to treat the mussel. Due to the fact that when we cook the “escabeche” we will be giving heat to the mussel, what we do in the previous step is only blanching the mussel. We open them with the help of a paring knife almost as if they were oysters. This allows us to get very big mussels and very tasty mussels as well.

So, in this recipe we work how to cook in acids, managing seafood and also a delicious recipe to enjoy with friends! Very complete!!

Preparation and handling of the mussels.

• First, filaments need to be removed, this is accomplished by cleaning with a pairing knife under running water. They should not be kept under water because they will open.
• Our aim is just to kill the mussels, not cook them, this is because we will cook them afterwards once we start with the escabeche. In order to this, we place them in boiling salt water (30% salt – their same medium of life, this way they don’t loose any taste) for 6-8 seconds. And then directly to an inverted ice bath (they should not touch the water so we can keep the juice).
• Go through the inside of the shell with a very sharp and thin knife, and cut the muscle once you reach it. You will see the mussel is almost the same size of the shell, much much bigger than when one does steaming preparations.
• Usually when we cook them for longer, the shell opens on its own because the mussel stops contracting.
• KEEP THE WATER –> we use it for the same escabeche or for other creative preparations we can think of. Even a leche de tigre for a cebiche. It is very tasty!!
• If you want to keep them for a day or two, keep them on their same water with some oil on top so they don’t oxidize and always at a very low temperature to keep the cold chain going.

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Early Saturday and direct to the market of Mala in search of the most fresh fish we can find. And we find this delicious corvina!

How did I prepare it? Like my Dad loves it: Chorrillana Style.

Here are some pics of the fish in the Market too

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What can we peruvians say about cebiche that you haven’t heard already? That we love it, that (for us) ours is the best, that no lemon compares to ours, our fish, our land, our climate… our chillis or “ajíes” and our people.

Spain has to be thanked indeed. Without the lemon seed they brought that grew in our land with its unique properties, and without onions cebiche would not exist. or ceviche. or seviche.

The thing is, yesterday (even though this pictures and recipe were taken a few weeks ago when I invited friends home for cebiche) my great friend Diego Salazar (a great gastronomy journalist and passionate about food and cooking) and me taught a cebiche course to a group of american students here in Madrid. It was, undoubtedly, the best excuse for me to wake up early and start preparing and cooking the sweet potatoes, peruvian corn, andean popcorn (canchita serrana), pack up knives and bowls, go to market, buy some fish, lemon (some peruvian I still had, which was great), onion, chillis (ajíes), ginger root, coriander and go to the course.

Cebiche in Perú, and for us peruvians abroad, matches perfectly with sunlight, friends and very cold beer. So now that the sun is coming out there is no better reason to have it. And now that in Lima the sun is fading out, no better way to say good-bye.

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