Finding Passion

To celebrate 2025 and bringing brightness and happiness to you.

Hello and Happy New Year. Welcome to the strange new world of 2025.

In January, to defy winter and bow to the power of sunlight, I gravitate toward yellow.

The color yellow, yellow food - I think it’s my craving for sunshine and warmth to remind me of the warmer days long from now. It’s my ode to the sun and the desire for the new year to be filled with happiness.

Even in Nosara in January, I am still on the hunt for a splash of yellow in my food, or even the burnt umber of yellowish orange, which never fails to delight me. It so happens one of my favorite tropical fruits is in season here in Costa Rica and fits that description, the Passionfruit.

Passionfruit felt like an obvious choice to satisfy my yellow cravings. I mean, it’s called Passionfruit for goodness sake, evoking the happiness I am hoping for in 2025. Sorry to all my cold wintering readers, I know that passionfruit ceviche isn’t a go-to for January, but I think it’s the perfect treat for a winter’s day to remind you of sunnier, warmer days ahead.

This is also a great treat to make for gatherings or the Super Bowl even to add color and fun to the usual circulation of wings and guacamole.

While I usually lecture on eating seasonally, eating locally and not regularly eating saltwater fish in a landlocked state, when the snow piles up and local food is hard to find and you want something cheery to eat, reminding you of your favorite seaside vacation, this hits the spot

Passionfruit can be found at your natural grocery store, my preference is Sprouts as they are readily found there. You will need to plan ahead and allow time for your passionfruit to ripen properly. Most passionfruit in the stores are found unripe and to the unknowing purchaser, when ripe, the fruit looks like something we wouldn’t eat. Old and wrinkled. But that is when the unparalleled flavor of passionfruit is at its zenith.

While you may gulp at the price of these wrinkled orbs, you will only need 3. If you haven’t worked with fresh passionfruit, the interior is a sac, filled with passionfruit juice, pulp and seeds that feel a bit like fattened chia seeds once softened in liquid. Often you will see advice to strain the juice from the seeds, but then you are missing out on much of the nutrition and fun, as the seeds are entirely edible as well. Personally, I enjoy the entire mess of pulp and don’t strain. I’ll leave that decision up to you. For the money, I want to use every drop of that golden fruit.

When it comes to choosing the fish, choose a white fish, but not snapper or sole or something super flakey and delicate that could easily become overmarinated, or turn mushy. And don’t ask about Tilapia. I don’t think Tilapia is near compelling enough to use for a dish that celebrates a truly delicious gift from the sea.

You are looking for something that is incredibly fresh and doesn’t smell remotely like fish. It should smell fresh and clean. Think cod, or halibut or what I have, mahi-mahi, called Dorado here in Costa Rica. Shrimp will also work well here.

You want to purchase your fish from somewhere that has a good reputation and “turns their fish” inventory quickly. Not a grocery store where everyone walks by the fish section holding their breath. And if you are lucky enough to live close to the sea, I trust you know your local fish monger.

Purchase your passionfruit up to 5 days before creating this and allow it to ripen at room temp on your counter. This is only if you find passionfruit that is fully round, unblemished and not wrinkled. In a pinch, if you also adore the flavor of passionfruit, I believe you can use the boxed juice should you find it. However, make sure to purchase your fish fresh the day or day before (max) you want to serve your ceviche. You will only need 1 ½ to 2 cups of diced fish, so any remaining fish can be prepared how you enjoy best. I would be a better chef to recommend a particular weight to purchase, but here in Costa Rica, I don’t have a scale and my local fish guy definitely doesn’t. So we wing it….

Locally, ceviche is often served with hot, fried patacones, which are plantains, but purchased plantain chips, cassava chips, tortilla chips or even any root vegetable chip work great.

For leftovers, should such a thing happen, the ceviche will be awesome the next day. With that vision in mind, I choose to remove the seeds and keep the cucumber skin on so it stays crisp and I don’t ad

d avocado to the whole mess so it doesn’t get slimy in my leftovers.

Finally, if you haven’t made ceviche and it feels intimidating to trust the non-cooking aspect of it all, the fish IS “cooked”, but really it’s cured in the acid and salt, which denatures the proteins of the fish and creates an enzymatic change the way cooking does. So there’s no fear of doing it wrong, or getting food poisoning. In reference to the “curing time”, some recipes say only 10 minutes, some say 20, and I suggest an hour. There is no right or wrong, it's a matter of personal preference. I personally like the fish to be more firm than raw, so I chose an hour. So taste it! Taste your fish as it’s curing and mix with the remaining ingredients when the fish is cured to your preference.

1 ½ cups fresh white fish such as halibut or mahi-mahi, diced small

1 navel orange or 2 tangerines juiced

2 limes juiced

3 passionfruit, sliced in half, seeds and pulp removed and not strained

½ teaspoon salt

1 cucumber seeded and diced small

¾ cup thinly sliced radish

½ cup small diced red bell pepper

1-2 fresno chilis, thinly sliced (or jalapeno)

¼ cup scallions, thinly sliced

¼ cup red onion, halved and thinly sliced

¼ cup chopped cilantro

1 avocado, sliced.

Instructions:

Place diced fish in a glass or ceramic bowl (don’t use metal, it will change the flavor)

Juice the oranges and lime.

Mix the juices to yield ½ cup total

Add the salt to the juice and stir to dissolve.

Pour over the fish and press down gently to submerge the fish in the juice.

Place in the refrigerator for one hour.

In the meantime, prepare your vegetables. Add the chopped cucumber, radish, red pepper, fresno or jalapeno, scallions, red onion and cilantro to a mixing bowl.

After an hour, the fish should be fully cured. Pour the entire contents into the bowl with the vegetables. Gently fold and add in the reserved passionfruit pulp.

Season to taste with more salt and additional lime juice as needed.

Add the avocado to the top or serve alongside with plenty of chips!

Enjoy this sunny yellow salute to a new year of personal health and happiness.