¡SI! CEVICHE
Vegan: Hearts of palm fills in for the seafood in this plant-based ceviche
Los Angeles chef Jocelynramirez remembers when it hit her: She and a friend were making a salad for dinner, and her friend brought out some hearts of palm. “I took a bite, and thought it had the texture and even a little bit of the taste of crab meat,” Ramirez said. She filed it away.
The memory came in handy when she started moving toward a plant-based diet. She had been experiencing thyroid problems she wanted to treat through food, and she had made vegan smoothies for her father as he recovered from cancer. “To be honest with you, seafood was one of the hardest things to transition from,” she told me in a phone interview.
Eventually, Ramirez, 37, started developing recipes for her plantbased catering company, Toto Verde, and a cookbook, “La Vida Verde,” which was published this year. She based many of the dishes for both on recipes from her Mexican abuela, but her grandmother grew up in Mexico’s landlocked state of Zacatecas, not near the coast. So when Ramirez wanted something that would easily stand in for seafood in a traditional ceviche, she thought about other childhood memories: trips to California crab shacks, her mother’s tilapia ceviche. Then, she remembered those hearts of palmand their crablike flavor.
Hearts of palm, a.k.a. palmitos, are vegetables harvested from the center of some palm species native to Central and South America. They’re packed in brine and remind me a little of canned artichokes. But once you marinate them in lemon juice and olive oil and fold in avocado, tomato, cucumber, jalapeño and cilantro, and scoop them up with tortilla chips or layer themon tostadas, the ceviche vibe is unmistakable.
When I tested her recipe, I polished off a serving and proceeded to nibble on it for days thereafter, using it in much the same way I would any salsa: dolloping it onto tacos and salads and grain bowls.
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Ramirez hit pause on her efforts to start a restaurant. She transitioned her catering business into one focused on education — perfect for someone who had previously worked in academia. She created virtual cooking classes and ingredient kits. Her book, in a way, is her response to customers at events who would taste her food: “They’d say, ‘If I could eat this way every day, I could totally be vegan.’”
Now, with her instruction, they can.