Aguachile is a Mexican dish from Sinaloa and it’s usually made with shrimp, marinated in a liquid seasoned with chile peppers, lime juice, salt, onions and sometimes raw vegetables or cucumbers. It literally means chile water. I haven’t been to Mexico yet, but it sounds like Peruvian ceviche to me. Just like the leche de tigre juices that come from a ceviche (tiger’s milk), this aguachile sauce can have many variations.
I remember being introduced to a Mexican ceviche a long ago, and didn’t care for it because the acid from the lime juice cooked the cubed fish all the way through. It was marinated for hours. The fish was firm and I thought the texture was odd, given that I grew up eating poke. Much later when I went to Peru, I learned a version of ceviche from an Argentinian chef which I liked because it was marinated in the lime juice for only a minute at most, giving it all the flavor of a ceviche but still raw on the inside like sashimi. You could still taste the fish.
It seems to be in trend today, as you see variations of the dish everywhere. Chefs are not only using shrimp, but other kinds of shellfish and fish. Chefs who come to the Hawaii Food and Wine Festival are asked to feature at least one local ingredient in their dish; so far I’ve seen kampachi and ono aguachile dishes with creative combinations of flavors. They all hit the sweet, sour, salty and spicy flavor notes. The garnishes get creative like pineapple, longan, coconut, jerk spice, basil, micro herbs, edible flowers, Okinawan purple sweet potato, popcorn and chilies of all kinds.
If you like spicy poke, you’ll love this dish.
I always thought that the chile pepper water we have in Hawaii was a gift from the Portuguese whalers or those who came to work on the plantations. Is there a connection between aguachiles and ceviche? Most of Mexico and South America was conquered by Spanish explorers and Portugal’s cultural influences are many depending on what time in history and occupation, including the Spanish. Piri piri is a Portuguese hot sauce introduced to them by the South Africans, using the African bird’s eye chile. That chile might have made its way to Hawaii because the bird chile is the Hawaiian chile pepper I like to make chile pepper water with.
I asked myself, “What is the difference between a ceviche and an aguachile dish?” They both use lime or lemon juice to submerge the protein in and the time that the cubed fish is left in the marinade determines how much the fish is “cooked.” They both have chile peppers in them and are usually spicy, seasoned with salt and always garnished with more than just onions and cilantro. In the end, what you get is a very refreshing appetizer full of flavors that excite the taste buds. They are more similar than they are different. It’s about what you do with the original idea and how creative you get that makes the difference. Today’s global cuisine is an evolution of history, travel, survival and a hunger for change.
In Hawaii, we have access to great fish from our ocean. We have sashimi and poke of all kinds. It’s great to learn about how other cultures prepare raw fish and shellfish dishes. It’s interesting to learn about their histories and how that influenced their cuisine, which helped to create their modern-day dishes. In Peru, there is a second generation cuisine called Nikkei Cuisine and can be characterized by asking the question, “What happens when the Japanese arrive and start tweaking one of their national dishes, the ceviche?” I love ceviche and Peru, but maybe it’s time to move on to aguachile and go to Mexico!
Chef and restaurateur Alan Wong has wowed diners around the world for decades, and is known as one of the founders of Hawaii Regional Cuisine. Find his column in Crave every first Wednesday. Currently, Wong is dba Alan Wong’s Consulting Co.
