Hungry for History with Eva Longoria and Maite Gomez-RejónFrom Ceviche to Sashimi and the Origins of Nikkei Cuisine
Eva and Maite take a dive into the history of raw fish consumption from ancient Peru and Japan and its possible introductions to Mexico. They explore how ceviche developed into the dish we love today thanks to Japanese immigration to Peru which led to the development of the country’s Nikkei cuisine.
My name is Eva Longoria and I am my demeracon and welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores our past and present through food.
On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages from our culture.
So make yourself at home, even brichel. We have talked a lot about meat. I'm a big meat eater. We've talked about chicken, fried steak, cadmia, sada.
We've covered the hot dog, barbecue, barbacor.
It is time to talk about sevice.
Peruvians are the originators of sevite, but Mexicans take civi ta very seriously too.
Today's episodes all about sevice. We've never discussed raw fish. I mean, have we discussed fish in general? I feel like this is roundbreaking for us. We haven't talked about fish at all. We've talked a lot about meat and a lot about sweets. The communities have eaten raw fish and raw meat around the world for centuries. Well, every time I eat sevicia, it's called Peruvian savichi, but I eat it all the time in Mexico, So I feel like, are there different versions? Does it originate in pdu.
It does originate in Peru, but Mexico has regional sevicha's as well. But this idea, this consumption of raw meat has been practiced in various cultures around the world for thousands of years, and so I think it's super interesting to see these similar customs springing up in different parts of the world and just shows how people are just trying to figure out how to survive.
Right, So, like raw meat and fish like raw meat, raw fish were a paleo diet, right, I mean technically Paleolithic era before before humans learned how to cook technically.
Even like Eskimo's consumed l well meat and Native Americans consumed raw buffalo.
Meat raw are we saying are we saying like they dried it or or raw like like sashimi.
Raw like sashimi exactly like ra ra like rara, like like tar tar ra ra. You know, ra la ra.
So historically, who ate the first sliced raw fish? It must be Asia.
No, So the first recorded evidence dates to China around A twenty three BC. And so this sort of practice of eating sliced raw fish was popular, especially at banquets for the nobility. But after that period records of eating raw fish are pretty scarce, and it's probably because diners were getting sick, so they were linking this consumption of raw fish to diseases. So we kind of stuck seeing it. And we start seeing it again in Japan around the eighth century, so centuries later, and we start seeing thish sashimi, so sashimi. The word sashimi literally translates to sliced meat, and it became super popular around the seventeenth century during the Edo period in Japan, which is a super interesting period when Japan was basically cut off from the rest of the Western world for about two hundred and fifty years and sort of Japanese food and a lot of things Japanese really developed during this time.
So so like sixteen hundred, sixteen hundred eight to the eighteen hundred.
Yeah, sixteen oh three to eighteen sixty eight is when that happened. And so this was possible because Japan has so much fish, right, just the sort of abundant fish that's suitable for consumption, and also the mass production of soy sauce. Sauce reduced the sort of fishy smell of the fish and it enhanced its flavor.
So wait, so soy sauce was invented specifically for sashimi.
Not specifically for sashimi, because but they were making soy sauce, you know, for seasoning for food, and they started adding it. They just realized, oh, this really just makes.
It taste better. And so they used all the fish, right, snapper, tuna, yellowtail, amber jack, like, there was no fish that was not used exactly.
They used a lot of fish, and they just have abundant of freshwater fish. But on the other side of the world around the same time or even before, for thousands of years, we have Peruvians, specifically the Macha culture that's even pre inca culture also eating raw fish. So I love this idea of just sort of similar customs. Yeah, Machini seviche emerging on opposite sides of the world at the same time.
Yeah, but those those two worlds would eventually meet through immigration. In Tokyo, you're getting freshwater fish, what are you getting in other parts of the world.
So Peru has this long Pacific coastline, so we also have these fresh sea bass and soul and red snapper, and that has been caught there for centuries. But it's not.
You can't just eat like, yeah, you can't just eat like any raw fish, right, I mean like I wouldn't. I wouldn't fish out of the rio grand and eat that raw right.
No, you would die. Please don't please don't, Yeah, don't do that. Please don't do that. Not all species of fish are suitable for raw consumption, right. And also because some bodies of waters are so you know, polluted, and so a lot like a lot of fish can and shoffish can contain parasites or bacteria. When we see sushi grade fish today, tuna and salmon and yettletail and sea bass, that is a term use to describe the fish that's considered safe to eat raw. It's a high quality fish that's been handled and processed to ensure freshness, and it's typically caught quickly, bled and then gut it and iced and so other like fish like salmon that are known to contain parasites are frozen at zero degrees fahrenheit for seven days or flash frozen super quickly for about fifteen hours. And so in the US, when we buy sushi grade fish, most of this fish has been flash frozen.
Yeah, So if you make sevicha like when I make sevich at home, I get sushi grade, I am like, I want to make sure that the fish is properly ready to be consumed raw.
Absolutely, And if you're going to make it, you know, anybody listening, if you're going to make rough fish, go to reputable fishmonger and tell them that you're going to eat it raw.
To so Mexico, like, where does Mexico come in? Because I feel like Peruvians obviously introduced this to Mexico when well, there are.
Different theories, right, So one theory is that, you know, Peruvians when when the Manila Galleons were coming to Mexico, and we talked about this a little bit in our Mercalo's episode, they would land and there would be these big fairs for like a month and a half, and Peruvians would go to a capulo to to buy stuff to buy these luxury girls coming from Asia. So maybe they brought this tradition with them. Another theory is that maybe this tradition was brought directly from the Philippines.
Oh oh again, because can we talk about can we please talk about water chili like to me feels more Mexican. Do they have awacina in Peru or do they have technically the evolution of this in each of For Mexico, it's technically it's basically I watch Mexican awa Chile and Peruvian tiratos are basically the Mexican and the Peruvian sashimis so because when we think of Chile, you see.
It mostly in the northern coast of so Noda. It's also popular just along the coastal areas. And it's definitely distinckling Mexican because it's super spicy, right, And titos is sort of the Peruvian version, and they use ahi, which is the Peruvian word for Chile, and let which is tiger's milk, which is like a spicy citrus based, you know, marinate. But it's the the Latin American version of sashimi just sliced rough why.
Chile with sliced raw shrimp. That's like the famous one here in Mexico. Like if you go to pot if you got a cabo, you know, any of those vacation spots, if you order normally, it comes with wrong with shrimp tue.
Yeah, yeah, you know. I've also had a really good one with ross scallophous.
You're fancy, you're bougie, so bougie, all right. When we come back, we're going to dive into the history of Peruvian Sevici.
We talked about Peru during our potato episode and discussed how scientific these ancient communities were when it came to agriculture. Well, the history of Cevicha there is just as rich. So don't go anywhere.
I feel like Cevicha is Peru's most emblematic dish.
So in twenty twenty three, UNESCO added Peru Sevice and the culture surrounding Cevicha to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list, and so yeah, the importance of this dish was recognized by UNESCO. So this is why it's the most emblematic dish.
And they have such a long coastline that they must have a close relation with the ocean and obviously used it to survive and thrive in free Colombian times.
They had to absolutely in the roots of modern Dcevita date to the Moche, a civilization that thrived in the northern coast from the first through eighth century, and their society was made up of these warrior priest rulers, weavers, metal spiths, potters, farmers, fishermen, and they used these sophisticated irrigation techniques to turn desert into farmland. They built canals and reservoirs, and they supported a population of about twenty five thousand, which is really incredible. But they left these numerous artifacts behind depicting fishing scenes, and some of them have evidence of these boats made out of reeds, and they developed special tools for fishing. So the Moche would catch their fish and marinated in dumbo, which is a really tart acidic fruit that's kind of similar to passion fruit that's native to South America. And so there's evidence that they were doing this about two thousand years ago, and then the Inca, you know, that came later. They also developed these advanced techniques for fishing the use of nuts and harpoons and fish traps. And this connection between the Inca and pre Inca cultures and the ocean is evident again in their art and their mythology. The Inca goddess Mamcocha, which is the mother sea, was the guardian of sailors and fishermen and was worshiped to ensure calm waters and good fishing. She was also believed to protect marine life and keep it healthy and fertile. Wow, so yeah, it's amazing. And so there's pottery and textiles with fish and sea creatures. So they were definitely a seafaring of seafood eating population.
So when Spaniards landed, they must have like thought they hit the jackpot. They were like what is this dish? Because they landed later. They landed later in Bedter than Mexico. But when Spanish colonizers landed in Peru, how did they influence I guess this particular fish marinated you know in Peruvian chili's with the seaweed and the dumbo, Like, how did how did it start to change or evolve?
Well, the Spanish and Portuguese traders they introduced onions. They introduced citrus first the bitter the bitter orange, and then limes and lemons. So and so that's how it started to evolve. Instead of the dumbo that they were using before, they started eating citrus. So it starts becoming a little bit more familiar to the city that we have today, which is you know, citrus based. And so we have this earliest known recipe for sevita Day's to eighteen sixty six and it's by Lima Ryder named Manuela Nastasio Fuentez, and he describes it as small pieces of fish or shrimp based in sour orange juice with a lot of chile and salt. I've never had ceviita with sour orange juice, but it's probably delicious.
Oh my gosh. Especially you know in Medina they have that that sour orange what's.
It called naki? Yeah, yeah, Well that's that's your deira, that is myerra, that is my dearra, my dad's land.
By the way, that sour orange goes well with so much. It goes well with the ce vice, goes well with fish, shrimp, pork, you know, they do the the with that sour orange marit. It goes with everything. I wish we could grow.
It, I know.
And so no one else was introduced. Well, the potato comes from Peru, right that the potatoes endemic to Petu is the sweet potato also endemic to Petoo and the corn nuts, because every time I have Peruvian sabcha, it's with those big pieces of corn, the corn nuts, with this big chunk of sweet potato. And I'm always like, what is sweet this sweet potato feels like odd man out in my sabichi.
It does because we're not familiar with that. I mean, it's definitely we don't see that in our Mexican savy chair. But yeah, sweet potatoes are native to to Peru, so it makes sense that they would include it and the giant cornuts. And they also include ginger in it, which is an interesting addition. So we start seeing this kind of Asian influence there with the ginger in the savy chin.
A lot of people don't know that at the citrus actually cooks the fish, right, Like, if you put lime on the shrimp of the fish, you leave it for a while, it actually cooks the fish. How is that possible? Because yeah, that's crazy.
It is kind of crazy. The protein in the tissue of the fish coagulates with the acid, and it makes the meat firm and opaque, and it's you know, it's sort of quote unquote cooks it. So it is this interesting chemical reaction that happens.
Where does the word sebchi come from.
So it may come from the Quechua ward sewechi, which is for fresh fish, or for the Spanish escaveche for pickled food, So it could be you know, this word escavich is an ancient method of preserving food in either vinegar or citrus that was introduced by the Spanish via the Moors, and so we see colonial era Spanish cookbooks containing recipes for both fish treated with vinegar or fish marinated in the juice of bitter oranges. So it could be a combination of the quechua swechi or the word is caavechi. It's one of those mysteries, but both both makes sense. Lima cuisine is super interesting. We talked about at the beginning of the episode about this Edo period where things where Japan was sort of shut up from the rest of the world. So at the end of Japan's Edo period, which we mentioned before, Japan opened up their doors and Peru was advertised as a paradise by Japan's new Meiji government, but really it wasn't. Recently independent, Peru was transitioning out of this economy that relied on slavery and on the system of indentured you know, agricultural labor that replaced it was really brutal, but Japanese immigrants they moved here to work these labor intensive or menial jobs that were you know that people just didn't want to do and they lived in that's desire familiar one hundred percent, one hundred percent.
So Paru's the first fire.
I know, it's crazy. Peru was the first Latin American country to accept Japanese immigrants. The first ship of Japanese immigrants arrived in eighteen ninety nine with about seven hundred and ninety passengers who came to work on sugar plantations, and then others arrived as farmers. They worked in silver mines and on cotton plantations, and this wave continued until the mid twentieth century.
This story is nothing new. Obviously, every immigrant community travels with their culinary traditions, and I think as long as there's been diasporas, like all these communities always try to replicate their food. They try to make their recipes with foreign and unfamiliar ingredients, and then this new fusion takes place. This was what I was doing when I was in Cataluna for six months and I could not find Chile and I was like, somebody send me. Somebody smuggled me in. Some said an o peppers because they just can't That's why you like, oh, I can't find good Mexican food in certain places. It's because you don't have tolmathios, you don't have said an. You know, there's a version of a tol maadio, there's a version of a chila. But you have to use what you have. And I think the Japanese immigrants eventually, you know, open small businesses, which obviously included restaurants. So many immigrants open, you know, restaurants, and so I think with the generation of this like Japanese Peruvian community, they became part of the social fabric of the nation. And that's that to me is beautiful.
One hundred percent. And this is where this nick cuisine comes into play. The word nique is Japanese word for immigrants and their descendants. So this is what they were called. Nique cuisine. Is this blending of both cultures and Nike food is a testament to their success because they were embedded in the economic and social fabric of the nation. And so we see Peruvian ingredients shaped by Japanese techniques and prepared through a Japanese lens.
So I feel like they Japanese would know how to value raw fish right, like they were like, yes, this is a dish we can get behind marinating raw fish.
So before the Japanese arrived, they were marinating the fish for you know, twelve hours, and the Japanese were like, no, no, no, we want to taste the fish. So let's put the lime and just let it sit for about fifteen minutes so that we can actually taste the fish. So we have the ahi, the lime, the red onion, the salt, this letter there, but just eating it right away. So so it just created this a new level of flavor. So you started you start seeing these you know sevi titty as, these nikue sevy tittia is opening up all over Lima and around the and around the country.
Everybody's heard of Nobu and he's obviously a famous Japanese chef, Nobu Matsuhitsa, the famed Nobu restaurants all over the world. But he was working at a sushi bar in Japan when a Japanese Peruvian customer who traveled twice a year from Dul to Tokyo asked him if he wanted to open a restaurant together in Pdul, and he did, and then he moved to Lima at age twenty four, and he learned in Lima from the culture and began combining his flavors, and his restaurant was a huge success thanks to this large Japanese community in Lima.
Isn't that crazy? It's I find that so fascinating. He was only there for three years. He considers Peru's second home. But this is where he honed. I mean, he was an incredible sushi chef in of course in Japan. Otherwise he wouldn't have been lured to Peru. But this is where he started combining these interesting flavors. And now you know, he doesn't need a last name anymore more. He's just he's noble. Everybody knows, you know, everybody's heard of him, you know. So I yeah, and that's just a testament to to food and cultures coming together.
I'm gonna go get some Awa Chile right now. Thank you guys for spending time with us. We love hearing from you, so keep sharing your messages and your reviews. Mikey, you got some good reviews. You want to shout them out.
Borosa Pine is her handle. She left us a review that said, love the podcast. I learned so much every time I listen and loden Now from the Bear, I sent a message after she heard our flun episode. She said, Yo, I eat to eat dessert, Minkanta Hungry for History. You're both doing a fabulous job.
Well, thank you everybody keep sending us messages. Glad you're enjoying our nerdy journey into food history. We will see you all next week. Hungry for History is a Hyphenet Media production in partnership with Iheart'smichael Tura podcast network.
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