Swai Ceviche

A great friend of mine who is mexican has over the years introduced me to many wonderful dishes. Among them have been pozole rojo, masa, and tostada ceviche. From the first time I tried the awesomeness that is mexican ceviche, it has been one of my summer favorites.

However, it never occurred to me how terribly easy it is to make it myself. I did a little experimenting, and here's what I've come up with so far:

1lb of Swai fillets
1 Roma tomato
1/2 oz of cilantro
1 small cucumber
1 cup of lemon juice
1/2 avocado
1 tsp olive oil (I just use the spray kind from Wal-Mart, zero calories and no fat)
2 tsp Chili Paste (preferably the Viet kind from an Asian market)
Garlic Salt
Dried Minced Onion
Valentina hot sauce
Tostadas of your choice

Pour the lemon juice into a big bowl that can be sealed with a lid. Dice the Swai fillets into 1/4 inch cubes (or smaller if you like). Dump the diced fish into the lemon juice and let it marinate overnight, 'til the fish is nice and white.

CLEAN AND SEED THE TOMATO AND THE CUCUMBER, and then dice them into 1/4 or 1/8 inch pieces, and rinse in a strainer, so there is no residue or juice--just dry, crisp tomato and cucumber. Chop the cilantro super fine (the finer the better).

In a separate bowl, add the olive oil, cilantro, cucumber, and tomato, and mix thoroughly. The olive oil just makes it mix nicely.

Strain the fish very thoroughly, and then mix together with the chopped veggies. Add the 2 teaspoons of chili paste, and garlic-salt + dried minced onion to taste (it doesn't take much), and mix it up good.

Place 6 ounces on top of a crunchy tostada, crown it with a few thin slices of avocado, and splash some Valentina hot sauce on top. Serve it COLD, and then thank me.

If I've done my math correctly, each 6oz serving of this ceviche (NOT COUNTING THE AVOCADO OR TOSTADA) contains approximately:

-170 Calories
- 10 grams of carbohydrates
- 3 grams of fat
- 25 grams of protein
- 68 mg of cholesterol
- 2 grams of fiber
- 280 mg of sodium
- 3 grams of sugars
- infinite grams of deliciousness

The above numbers do not account for the nutritional values of the lemon juice in which the fish was marinated. Does anyone have a suggestion about how to account for this nutritional content?

You can use virtually any mild white fish, but Swai is super cheap almost anywhere you buy it, and it has a great nutritional profile. Wal-Mart sells it for less than $2.20/lb. So with serving sizes of 6 ounces, this works out to less than $1.00 per serving. Three servings generally fills me up full, and I have a HUGE appetite, so this works out to around $3 per meal (again, not counting the tostada and the avocado).

If I count the tostadas and the avocado, then inside of one single meal I can easily get 75 grams of protein with less than 20 grams of fat. That's awesome!


P.S. before anyone asks, YES, the fish is RAW, so if you're the squeamish type who can't handle sushi or raw fish then don't bother.