Thomasina Miers' Mexican aguachile recipe
Scallops, chilli, tomatoes – what’s not to love about Thomasina Miers’ Mexican aguachile? Serve with totopos – fried tortilla chunks.
Ingredients
For the aguachile- 400 g hand-dived scallops
- 4 limes, juiced (approx. 200ml juice)
- 1 green chilli, roughly chopped
- 1 tsp fish sauce
- 1 tsp flaky sea salt
- 2.5 tbsp demerara sugar
- 0.5 large cucumber or one small
- 2 tbsp good quality tequila
- 1 banana shallot (or 4 baby ones), finely sliced
- 14 cherry tomatoes, quartered
- 1 avocado
- 1 a handful of chopped chervil, roughly chopped
- 1 a handful of coriander, roughly chopped
- 6 stale tortillas
- 300 ml vegetable oil to fry
Details
- Cuisine: Mexican
- Recipe Type: Main
- Difficulty: Medium
- Preparation Time: 80 mins
- Cooking Time: 15 mins
- Serves: 6
Step-by-step
- For the aguachile: Clean the scallops by slicing off their tough muscles that run along one side and discarding the roe. Slice the seafood into small dice, about 1cm square.
- Pour the lime juice into an upright food blender, adding half the chilli, the fish sauce, salt, sugar and a 5 cm chunk of the cucumber.
- Blitz the whole lot, pour in the tequila and taste for seasoning. Depending on the heat of your chilli you may want to add the rest to the blender, or even add another one, but if you are using a Thai green chilli half may be enough. You are looking for an extremely hot marinade though, albeit one that you can actually taste. Add more fish sauce, salt or sugar if you think it needs it.
- Add the shallot to the mixture together with the cherry tomatoes and the scallops.
- Cut the rest of the cucumber in half lengthways, scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon, cut into slices about ½ cm thick and add to the marinade. Put in the fridge for between 30 minutes to 1 hour.
- When you are ready to eat, stir most of the garnish herbs into the aguachile. Ladle small amounts of it into small bowls (glass ones look very pretty).
- For the totpos: Cut stale tortillas into 6ths and fry in veg oil until crisp and golden. Drain from oil and sprinkle with salt.
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