FOOD

Tiritas de pescado
Source: The Taste of Zihuatanejo Cookbook – Seafood

Perhaps one of Zihuatanejo’s most famous fare and what Zihuatanejans call uniquely their own, are Tiritas, lime marinated fish strips. A quick and easy way to honor fresh fish, they are often prepared on fishing charter boats, straight from the sea, but if you don’t want to catch your own fish you can find tiritas on the menu at most any beach front restaurant in Zihuatanejo. (ask for Tear - ritas)

TIRITAS

Ingredients:

1/2 kg. filleted, de-boned white-meat Fish: dorado, sierra …
6 purple onions
5 limes
8 chiles serranos
salt

Procedure:

Juice all 5 limes and put lime juice in a large non-metal bowl.
Thinly slice the fish in uniform strips. Put the fish strips in the lime juice, cover and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Slice the purple onions and the chiles.
Partially drain the juice from the fish, leaving just enough for flavor, and blend in the chiles and onions. Salt to taste.

Serve with saltine crackers or tortilla chips, spicy Buffalo sauce and cold Corona optional.

Legend has it that Don Pedro Serrano actually invented one of my favorite Zihuatanejo things – “tiritas”, a white ceviche of finely sliced raw fish “cooked” only in fresh lime juice – when he was shipwrecked and lost at sea after a failed assassination attempt against him (!) in 1970. Young Pedro, then an inspector for the Federal Fisheries Department who had discovered several “irregularities” at the Zihuatanejo Cannery, was drifting on the open ocean for three days after sabotage had stalled all the engines on his boat. With nothing to eat except for a handful of limes and a few fresh fish he and his three companions had managed to catch - but for lack of a stove or combustible material had been unable to cook - Pedro deduced from his observations of pelicans and seagulls that ingestion of raw fish did not appear to result in certain death. He sliced up the fish, drizzled it with fresh lime juice and a little sea salt and – voilá! – Zihuatanejo’s best-loved form of sashimi was born. –Wibke Langhorst, “The Incredible Culinary Adventures of Don Pedro Serrano,” Another Day in Paradise, December 2002.

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