Naked Ceviche

When I was living down on the farm with my father back in April I got into the habit of knocking up what I have come to call 'naked' ceviches, which contain everything except the main ingredient, meat or seafood.

Last night we had just finished chopping up the tomato, onion and mint when we realised that we had more or less run out of limones. And then V made the serendipitous discovery that mandarin juice works pretty well too!

Neither of us ever really knew what to do with aubergines back in the UK, but over the past few weeks here in Antigua they've become one of our favourite ingredients. Guatemalan aubergines - berenjenas - are more pear-shaped than the ones you find back home, which tend to be shaped like the balloons used by kiddies' entertainers. They are delicious simply fried in thin strips and are great for adding to meat dishes.

We've also been cooking with a lot of uniquely Central American ingredients recently, such as loroco, chipilín and miltomate. Guatemala is also one of the world's biggest producers of French beans and we've been buying around 4lbs of these a week, for which our greengrocer-on-wheels charges just Q10.