Divya Gugnani: I love to wine and dine my friends and family. I’m Divya Gugnani and I’m always in search for some inspiration for my menu which brings me to a friends house who has a new cookbook out. So let’s go behind the burner and meet the chef.

So I’m here with Marcus Samuelsson and he is going to make some fabulous recipes from his new book.

Marcus Samuelsson: Yes and the book is called the New American Table. Salmon Ceviche is showing about how simple that is to do. So we’ll just going to take a little bit of red onion and a little bit of garlic and a little bit of chili’s and I want to sauté that off. You can cook the—if you like chili’s, you should definitely keep them in.

Divya Gugnani: Right. Because the tip there is that seeds adds a lot of heat. So either you use them or don’t use them depending how spicy you want it to be.

Marcus Samuelsson: Yes. I’m going to put the pan and get a good olive, again, just sweat this off.

Divya Gugnani: What red stuff are you dumping on there and also black pepper.

Marcus Samuelsson: You know I’m using a chili blend called Berbere from my home country, smell that?

Divya Gugnani: I’ve got to get with this.

Marcus Samuelsson: Yeah, that would be the cheapest and smell that.

Divya Gugnani: Oh my God, it’s amazing.

Marcus Samuelsson: It’s good right? And the we’re just going to put lime and I’m just going to squeeze lime juice, you can squeeze that with me.

Divya Gugnani: Yeah, I will.

Marcus Samuelsson: I’m going to put in a little bit of oil just to make it nice.

Divya Gugnani: I guess Marcus, when my limes have been in fridge, I feel like I either heat them in the microwave for like ten seconds so I roll them on the cutting board to get—

Marcus Samuelsson: Good.

Divya Gugnani: You know, I do kind of wanted these numbers to heat it up so that all of the juice flows right up.

Marcus Samuelsson: I’m going to go in here with the chili’s and the onions.

Divya Gugnani: Oh my God! That smells incredible. You know it’s gotten really earthy smell to it.

Marcus Samuelsson: It does and my book, the New American Table is all about sort of this multi culture, this incredible diverse nation. Make your dinner party, celebrate your holidays in American, be American but bring in those culture that you’re from and that’s one of the coolest thing. Due to our image and due to that story, our food is changing constantly.

Divya Gugnani: We’re so lucky to have this amazing diversity in America.

Marcus Samuelsson: So when you do a Ceviche like we do in here.

Divya Gugnani: Right, we’re just traditionally Caribbean

Marcus Samuelsson: Caribbean or from Mexico or for Columbia but we don’t have the same chili’s that you have would have. It has this American version of it.

Divya Gugnani: Yeah.

Marcus Samuelsson: And guess what, it doesn’t taste the same but it can actually imitates better. I’m going to mix this together here.

Divya Gugnani: So this salmon, you just literally cut it up and put it—you know when you’re buying fresh salmon, you always want to make sure that it’s odorless and you know it’s fresh.

Marcus Samuelsson: And this Ceviche here, this is the key. This is where the Ceviche now. If you want it to be really nice and hard Ceviche with the way that they do very often in Mexico, let it sit for a good two hours.

Divya Gugnani: I think that makes all the difference because all of the flavors come together.

Marcus Samuelsson: Yes, if you want to moist more sort of a Caribbean style, just turn it maybe for ten minutes or five minutes.

Divya Gugnani: Right.

Marcus Samuelsson: You can decide, and then we’re going to add in some salt and then a little bit of parsley and cilantro and then we’re ready.

Divya Gugnani: So the key here and a lot of people don’t understand this is that a lime juice can almost pretty much cook the salmon.

Marcus Samuelsson: It marinated it.

Divya Gugnani: Yeah, it marinates so it cooks it a little bit. So it’s not entirely raw. It’s raw but it’s that a little cooking—it cures it, that’s the right word and that’s what I’m looking.

Marcus Samuelsson: And then I have a bunch different chips, simple chips that we didn’t made that we just went out to buy.

Divya Gugnani: You don’t want to be doing 800 things. You want to make some nice and fresh Ceviche we’d go and freaking buy the chips. You don’t want to kind of over mix it because you don’t want to break the salmon pieces.

You want those salmon chunks, some kind of almost folding it.

Marcus Samuelsson: Do that. I’m just putting a couple of sauces on the plate for flavor. The key is again, we bought these sauces. You’re not going to have all.

Divya Gugnani: So what kind of sauces. Tell us what you’re putting in there because I’ve got to represent the heritage now.

Marcus Samuelsson: You are coming up so you know I thought about you know let’s buy a couple of great Indian sauces because this is chutney which I love you know it’s really nice, great flavor.

Divya Gugnani: I love too. I can eat this thing on sandwiches too.

Marcus Samuelsson: We’re just going to put a nice little Ceviche here and like that on each one.

Divya Gugnani: Let’s look and admire this beautiful creation. It actually came together very quickly.

Marcus Samuelsson: Quickly. Five minutes salmon Ceviche inspired from Peru, it’s proven American dish but we have world influence in it.

Divya Gugnani: So Marcus, I can’t wait to try the Ceviche, it’s look beautiful.

Marcus Samuelsson: It’s nice world, beautiful inspired from New American Table. Simple thing to do and it takes five minutes.

Divya Gugnani: Okay, I’m taking the entire thing.

Marcus Samuelsson: Go ahead. Good.

Divya Gugnani: It was out of this world. It was delicious explosion of flavor. A little bit of heat from the chili’s. Fresh seafood taste and I love the sauces.

Stay tuned to Behind the Burner where we give you the tips, tricks and techniques that are lighting the culinary world on fire.

For the recipe, Q&A, photos, visit BehindtheBurner.com.