Lord of the Ceviche part III: The Return of the King

I think many families have a special city, town or region where they spend holidays. Between 1990 and 1996, I travelled with my family to a town called Puerto Peñasco each Easter. I have very nice memories of Puerto Peñasco: my sister and I inviting different friends each year, my brother vomiting because he ate 8 brownies when he was six years old, me kissing a girl for the first time, going fishing with my grand father and collecting clams at the beach. However, there is one thing I learned there which changed my life: A cook trusted me his secret recipe to prepare the king of ceviche.

That secret lies in the fish and the way to cut the flesh. The fish has to be sierra (in English Pacific Sierra or Sierra Mackerel) and the flesh has to be “separated” from the fish’s skin by “scrubbing” it using a spoon.

This knowledge was entrusted to me almost 17 years ago by that Master, and I made good use of this information. I prepared a sierra ceviche the next day after receiving the secret recipe, but it was not until last December when I decided to use all my powers, I wanted to show the world the immense supremacy of the king of ceviche, I gathered forces from the very deep of my soul and prepared mentally to combine the experiences I had collected during my extensive mission and mixed it with the old Masters’ secret. My family and I were witnesses of what happened…

Our journey started when we departed to the Palmilla beach; there I encountered an assembly of wise old men, who made a living by extracting living fish from the deep waters of the Sea of Cortéz. To achieve that, they used wooden boats, as old as history itself. The wise men brought the fish to the land and sacrificed them at the windy sea shore. The men separated the gutter from the flesh and fed it to the schools of birds…albatrosses…sea gulls and pelicans, all hungry for fresh bloody guts.

An old wise man provided me and my cousin Laura a piece of fresh sacrificed fish to taste it…it was raw, it was mouth-watering, and yes…it was Sierra.

Laura and I, without hesitating, acquired the necessary amount of fish to feed my starving tribe. Back in our shelter we scrubbed the flesh out of the Sierra filets, marinated it with lime juices so it obtained their scent, combined it with sacred red onions, fresh coriander and tomato and we added a new component to the original recipe: avocado cubes.

After curing the ceviche for half an hour, we were ready for ingesting its powers and there it was, the king was once more with us, we all were there…we all tasted it...the return of the king.