Seviche

Seviche is normally prepared with 3/8-inch cubed fish, and tomato juice makes up much of the sauce. Instead, we bought quarter-pound filets of sushi-grade snapper from the Berkeley Bowl, and soaked them all day in a small glass pie pan in the juice of three limes and three lemons. The raw fish turns opaque as if it had cooked from some reaction between the acid and the lemon juice.

We made a salsa consisting of a giant beefstake tomato, cubed, a small onion, minced, capers, fresh oregano from the garden, and olive oil. The seviche from Joy Of Cooking replaces the capers with chopped green olives, uses dried oregano, and adds cilantro and jalepeno, and optionally avocado.

On the side, we had a "Spanish rice": we cooked brown rice with paprika added to the water, then lightly sauteed the greens of a spring onion in olive oil, a small tomato, the rice, some turmeric, and a hint of ketchup.