Quality salmon and a pile of mangoes can mean only one thing: Ceviche!  There are a lot of ways to make ceviche – this is the way that has been handed down to me by my father.  As a kid, I hated when he made this, because it used up all of the perfectly ripe mangoes he’d been hoarding and mixed them with raw fish and lime juice, rendering them inedible.  The dish hasn’t changed, but I have: this is now one of my all-time favorites.

The basics of ceviche:  raw salmon and onions cured in lime juice with a few diced mangoes, some bell peppers, and cilantro, topped with popcorn.  Yep, popcorn.

Clean off the salmon by removing all the skin and brown/gray parts.  The brown bits are oxidized and can lend a fishy flavor to the final product.  Then cut the salmon into medium-thickness bite-size strips and soak them by covering them in lime juice.  Also toss in about half the volume of salmon in diced onions (1/4 in cubes).  If you’re working with sub-perfect fish or have a ton of limes to spare, discard the first soaking of lime juice and replace with fresh stuff.  The lime juice should cover the fish during the soaking, but you shouldn’t necessarily use all of it in the final product anyway.  Add about as much sliced mango as you have of fish, and mix it all up.  If it’s not sweet enough, add more mango, or supplement with a bit of honey or raw sugar – taste is more important than quibbles about the origin of sugar in the final product.  That said, don’t overdo it.

Cut up some bell pepper and mix it in as well.  Now pick all the leaves off of the cilantro – a lot! – so there are no stems in the final product.  Cut them coarsely and toss everything together.  It’s worth the effort to really avoid the stems.  Add a bit of fresh-ground black pepper and serve up with a healthy scattering of fresh (and not from a microwave bag!) popcorn.

Perfect weather nice, but optional.