No Cooking Required

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Carottes Râpées, France’s ubiquitous carrot salad, gets a game-changing upgrade

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By Leslie Brenner

It’s about time carottes râpées got an upgrade. The simple carrot salad, ubiquitous in France, is what French people make when they don’t have anything but carrots in the larder, or their imagination has run dry. Dressed with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and maybe a little Dijon mustard, it has the potential to be delightful. Yet most French people are anything but excited to see it land on the table.

That’s because it’s usually made with a box grater (râpées means “grated”); it’s a salad whose wood-shavings-like texture nearly always drags it down. At least in France it’s not weighed down by raisins and mayo, the way it might be in America; the French do keep it light and savory.

Those who want to take some time and care with it are capable of culinary magic: elevating an ordinary dish to something you might even serve to friends. They take out their sharpest knife and, after peeling the carrots, cut them into fine julienne. That’s what James Oseland suggested in his 2021 book World Food: Paris.

Julienned carottes râpées

And he’s right — it is much nicer.

But cutting carrots into julienne is also a lot of work, even if you use a mandoline.

Recently I found a better way to elevate the dish: Once you’re done peeling the carrots, just keep going — use the peeler to shave the entire carrot into ribbons. Before long, and with little effort, you’ll have a mountain of ribbons. Dress it with the classic combo of lemon and olive oil, snip some chives on top (or parsley, or chervil, or dill) and you’re good to go. The ribbons give the salad lovely texture. Add some nigella seeds or poppy seeds if you want to give it a little more dimension. But only if you want to. The ribbon treatment alone makes it really nice.

It’s that little bit of culinary magic: You’ve turned the dish into a plate of tangy, fresh, bright, ribbony delightfulness.

And you didn’t have to turn on the stove.

RECIPE: Carottes Râpées, Ribbon-Style

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Summer of Ceviche: How to create an alluringly spicy-cool and balanced aguachile, vegan or otherwise

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By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is Part 3 of a multi-part series. Here are Part 1 and Part 2.]

In the hands of an able chef, aguachile — northwest Mexico’s take on ceviche — can be so enticing. Yet try a recipe pulled off the internet, even from one of the most trustworthy cooking sites, and chances are it will be so acidic it scrapes the enamel off your teeth, and so chile-hot, you can’t eat more than one bite.

A recipe on one of those respected sites starts by blending three stemmed and seeded serranos with 3/4 cup straight lime juice and salt; two more serranos (plus some ground pequins) are added later.

What’s wrong with that?

The chiles, for starters. Five? Why not 10? The resulting aguachile may well be inedible either way.

That’s because all serranos are not created anything like equal. They can range in length from about one to four inches, and in Scoville heat from 10,000 to 25,000 units. One serrano can be powerfully spicy. Or relatively mild. So calling for a specific number of them without providing opportunities to taste and adjust is absolute folly.

All serranos are not created equal!

Much smarter is to start with a small amount of serrano, then gradually add more, if needed. That way you won’t wind up wishing you could subtract. Our recipe lets you do that.

RECIPE: Hearts of Palm Aguachile

Then there’s the lime juice. As we explained in Part 1 of this series, lime juice’s acid needs to be tamed to make a good ceviche, one that’s not harsh and twangy. That is, it needs to be diluted with a measure of something less acidic — orange juice, water, coconut water or something else.

READ: Summer of Ceviche Part 1

But wait — what exactly is an aguachile, anyway?

Let’s back up and talk about what makes an aguachile an aguachile, and how they’ve been evolving.

In Sinaloa, their birthplace, traditional aguachiles are shrimp ceviches spiked with wild chiltepín chiles; their sauce is a suspension of chiles in water — hence the name, which means “chile water.” Michael Snyder wrote an excellent piece about them for Eater a couple years ago.

The dish has captured the imaginations of chefs and other cooks far beyond Sinaloa. While shrimp versions are popular wherever aguachiles are found, as the dish has evolved, all kinds of seafood are getting the aguachile treatment. In Mexico City, chef Gabriela Cámara has two octopus aguachiles on her menu at Contramar — one green, the other red. Stateside, the Los Angeles restaurant Holbox has one starring Baja bay scallops. In New York City, Enrique Olvera’s Cosme offers one with hiramasa (amberjack), along with rhubarb and shiso.

In Dallas, where I live, Molino Olōyō chef and co-owner Olivia Lopez (who is also Cooks Without Borders’ Mexican Cuisine expert) has featured fluke in a spectacular aguachile with watermelon, green habanero and coriander at a couple of recent pop-up dinners, and kampachi with peaches in one at a recent take-out pop-up.

But aguachile is not just for seafood: There’s a beef aguachile on the menu at El Carlos Elegante (my favorite Mexican place to bring out-of-town visitors), and I recently enjoyed a Wagyu steak aguachile at a delightful Tex-Mex spot, Las Palmas.

And in the hands of careful chefs, deliciousness is the goal, not creating something so searingly spiced that only chile daredevils will enjoy it.

An aguachile for vegans

Aguachiles made with hearts of palm — palmitos in Spanish — have been popping up all over the internet. Made well and balanced properly, they can be wonderful: The texture of the hearts of palm almost mimics scallops or halibut. Adding slices of avocado adds richness. The best ones are not just great vegan aguachiles, but great aguachiles.

Unfortunately, as with seafood aguachiles, far too many of the palmito versions call for a lot of straight lime juice, and a stupidly precise number of chiles — four on that same respected cooking site that used five in the seafood aguachile. If you used four of the serranos currently residing in my fridge, the result would be inedible.

Our palmito aguachile recipe takes a soft approach — and its sauce is so delicious, you may want to drink it from the plate. We start with two parts coconut water, one part lime juice and a handful of cilantro, add a little salt and blitz it with one-quarter of one seeded serrano. Yep, just one quarter!

Taste it. If it’s spicy enough, you’re good to proceed. Want more heat? Add more serrano and blitz again. Repeat until you’re happy. The sauce has lovely body thanks to the cilantro; and it’s visually appealing, to boot. As you can see on the photo at the top of the story, the chile and herbs are suspended in the clear liquid. It looks the part of aguachile.

Next you arrange sliced hearts of palm on a platter with radishes, sliced avocado and ribbons of cucumber; slivers of red onion that have soaked in water to soften their flavor are nice in there as well. Pour the sauce over, and garnish with some chile threads, if you like.

But don’t feel like you need to go vegan with this sauce; it works well as an all-purpose aguachile bath. Substitute quickly blanched shrimp for the hearts of palm, and it’s differently delicious. Or use both palmitos and shrimp. Or skip the palmitos and use thinly sliced sea bass or other white fish, letting it “cook” about five minutes in the sauce before serving. The world is your oyster.

And yes — you could use oysters!

Whatever you use, tostadas make a nice accompaniment.

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Recipe for Today: Som Tam (Thai Green Papaya Salad)

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By Leslie Brenner

When I’m craving something tangy and fresh, there’s nothing that satisfies like som tam — Thai green papaya salad.

This version, adapted from Leela Punyaratabandu’s wonderful Simple Thai Food, not only satisfies that craving spectacularly; it’s also a great introduction to Thai cooking. It may even make you feel like a star. Keep your eyes open for green papayas — this is a dish will tang up your entire summer.

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Summer of ceviche: Two ways to let umami take your ceviches to the next level

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Snapper Ceviche with Dashi and Seaweed

By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of a multi-part series. Here’s Part 1.]

If you’ve eaten ceviche in Peru, or dined anywhere in the world with a serious ceviche program, you’ve probably heard of leche de tigre — “tiger’s milk.” A marinade and sauce that can also be sipped after you’re done eating the ceviche, it’s one of the most delicious tricks up the sleeves of the Peruvian ceviche masters — Peruvians even spike it with pisco (Peru’s national liquor) and drink it as a cocktail.

Leche de tigre is brilliant for introducing umami into a ceviche, while at the same time smoothing out the harsh acid of the lime juice. You’ll see it as an ingredient in many ceviche recipes, along with a sub-recipe, as it’s not something you can buy: It’s fish broth combined with lime juice, fish trimmings and cilantro, maybe garlic and/or chile. Perhaps some red onion, which is also used in the fish broth. Oh, yes — first you’ll need a recipe for fish broth. And in order to make fish broth, you’ll need fish frames and heads.

In other words, most home cooks will skip that recipe.

It’s easy to see how restaurants can manage to make fish broth for leche de tigre; they can start their ceviches from whole fish and use those heads and frames for big batches of broth. But for most of us at home, part of the appeal of ceviche is that it’s not just fresh, cool and expressive, but also relatively quick and easy.

So how to add umami into the equation without going to all that trouble? Two interesting — and very different — ways to go are dashi or tomatoes.

Ingredients for dashi (kombu and katsuobushi, or dried bonito flakes), and the finished stock

A Japanese touch

I thought about dashi, the simple, easy-to-make stock that’s the foundation of Japanese cooking, because it’s packed with umami, redolent of the sea, and quick and easy to make. In fact, it only involves two ingredients besides water: kombu (a type of seaweed) and bonito flakes. You can keep both on hand in the pantry, and it only takes 10 or 15 minutes for a batch. You can freeze the leftover dashi, or use it later to make a quick miso soup.

Dashi as a ceviche ingredient makes sense culturally, because there’s a strong Japanese influence in Peruvian cooking — known as cocina nikkei — thanks to Japanese immigration to Peru beginning in the late 19th century. And dashi’s ingredients — seaweed and bonito — are both found in Peru’s Pacific.

While I’ve seen various ceviches that use Japanese ingredients — including shaved bonito (or katsuobushi) as a garnish — I haven’t seen any recipes that use dashi in the marinade.

It works beautifully, imparting a gentle sea-kissed umami to the fish. I chose red snapper from the Gulf of Mexico for this ceviche because that’s what looked beautiful that day, but you could use sea bass, or any firm-fleshed white fish. Wakame seaweed and cucumbers play nicely with the fish, and you can finish it with furikake — the Japanese condiment that includes sesame seeds, salt, red pepper and nori seaweed.

Tomato power

Taking advantage of tomatoes’ awesome umami power feels just right for the season. Sure, you can dice tomatoes and toss them in with whatever fish or seafood you’re using, or use halved cherry tomatoes, which also add pretty color. But why not include some puréed tomato in the marinade?

In Central Ecuador, there is a tradition of including puréed tomatoes in the marinade for a ceviche of blanched shrimp.

Here I poached the shrimp in a quick broth made from their shells, along with cilantro and red onion. I strained the broth, combined it with chopped tomato, lime juice, salt and arbol chile, then blitzed it for the marinade/sauce. Slivers of red onion and sliced cucumbers garnished the ceviche — which I served with tostadas. (In Ecuador, it would be more likely to be served with plaintain chips, but the tostadas are really nice.)

The sauce, meanwhile, is so delicious my husband and I drank every drop.

RECIPE: Ecuador-Inspired Shrimp Ceviche

Finally, here’s an easy raw-fish ceviche that requires no cooking except zapping an ear of corn in the microwave for 60 seconds (or giving it a quick dunk in boiling water). Starring tomatoes, avocado, yellow bell pepper, scallions, cilantro and barely-cooked corn kernels, it’s a full-on celebration of summer. The tomato takes two forms: It’s puréed in the marinade as well as diced with the other garnishes.

This time it was rockfish that spoke to me from the fish case: it was fresh and gorgeous. Snapper or sea bass would be fabulous, too; choose what looks most appealing.

RECIPE: Rockfish Ceviche with Tomato and Corn

Note about the safety of raw fish

FDA guidelines stipulate that any fish other than tuna species (including bigeye, yellowfin, bonito/skipjack and bluefin) and farmed salmon must be frozen before it’s safe to consume raw; freezing it kills any possible parasites. However, as this excellent Serious Eats article explains, the risk of infection from raw fish is very low. Personally, I would never eat raw farmed salmon, because of well documented problems in their feed (and I don’t like their flavor.) The phrase “sushi-grade” is meaningless. If you’re nervous about the safety of eating raw fish, it’s best to choose something that’s been frozen.

READ: Summer of Ceviche, Part 3

Curious about how this article came to be? Check out our weekly Substack newsletter where we develop ideas and deliver extra recipes. Here’s the issue that birthed this ceviche series.

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