Adapted from a recipe in Jane Grigson's Fish Cookery. She uses the ink, I don't, mostly because I usually freeze the squid (or buy it frozen in a five-kilo box) which makes it very hard to get the ink sacs out whole. Also, the added ickiness makes teenage and pre-teen girls shriek too much for comfortable cooking.
It's best to use medium-sized squid, about 4 inches long (take your ten-year-old to the market and measure by her hand). That's large enough to actually taste of something and to be easy to clean, and small enough to be tender.
This amount serves two adults and three children, so probably four adults with average appetites. Good accompaniments are ciabatta or any other firm crusty white bread, and a substantial green salad made with red wine vinegar.
If you have trouble reading metric measures, here is a good conversion site. I'll probably add imperial measures when I run out of things to do first.
Ingredients |
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1 kilogram squid 1 large onion or 2 small onions or a handful of shallots 3-4 ripe tomatoes a little tomato concentrate olive oil salt, pepper, paprika, sugar (optionally) wine vinegar |
Cleaning the squid |
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This is a fiddly business, not hard but messy and slightly icky; if you have a teenage girl who wants to give a hand with the cooking let her do the onions and tomatoes while you do the squid. If you're squeamish yourself you can buy your squid ready-cleaned, but then you won't have the tentacles, which are the best part. Take a squid in one hand and pull firmly but gently at the head with the other hand until the head comes off. If you're lucky, the intestines will come with it. Cut the tentacles off just behind the eyes, so they stay in a bunch, and put them in a bowl. Rub and peel the purplish skin off the body (goes best under a cold tap) until you have a white smooth sack-like object. The fleshy "fins" are edible, but if it's too much trouble to preserve them it doesn't matter much. Pull out the transparent plastic-like "pen" (calamus; this gave rise to the name 'calamari') and press out all other goo and strange objects. Rinse out the sack and cut it into three or four pieces. Put them with the tentacles. Repeat until you run out of squid. Drain and dry with kitchen paper. |
Preparing onions and tomatoes |
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Pour boiling water on the tomatoes to cover and leave for one minute, then drain and remove peel and core. Cut the tomatoes into one-inch pieces. Peel and chop the onions, not too finely. |
Cooking |
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Fry the onions in oil until they start to brown a little. Put the squid in (beware of spitting, even if you dry it very well there's a lot of water in it) and fry until it's evenly white and curls up. Add the tomatoes, about a teaspoonful of tomato concentrate and a glass of red wine, preferably something strong and Mediterranean. Stew this, uncovered, for about 25 minutes (longer if you had large squid), then taste and season with salt, pepper, paprika and a pinch of sugar to bring out the tomato flavour. If the sauce is too thin for your taste, fish out as much of the squid and onions (the tomatoes will have disintegrated for the most part) as you can and boil it down, then add the solids again. If it seems bland, a drop of wine vinegar (not too much!) will perk it up. |