The Yellow House

When I was 18, I arrived late at night in Lima, Peru, and was whisked off to the house of a family friend with whom I’d be staying. I watched Lima—a city that’s a sensory overload of dirty streets, tropical flowers, political propaganda, colonial palaces, street food vendors, and stray dogs—go by through the open window of the cab and smelled, above all of that, the briny Pacific. When we reached the house, my hostess sat me down at the kitchen table. I had never heard of ceviche before, but as a bowl was placed in front of me, that same ocean-salted tang wafted up. Whatever was in that bowl, it was scented like the sea.
The trip to Peru shaped me in a lot of ways—it was my first time traveling solo internationally, my first exposure to global health and development work, and in my head, I still equate ceviche with dusty adventure and fierce independence. I’ve loved it since. That first Peruvian ceviche was made with a delicately flaked white fish, but Gabi’s version with scallops and watermelon has been on my radar for awhile now. Worrying that the watermelon flavor might be too overpowering, she uses just the palest pink-white part of the watermelon, closest to the rind, in her ceviche. I was not trying to have a lot of leftover watermelon, though, and needed another way to mellow out the flavor. » Click to read more