Stuffed Squid

I was going to try out a new apple recipe (it’s harvest season, right?) until I went to the supermarket and stopped to chat with my favorite fish seller. As I joke I asked, “What? No octopus?” (Not that I’ve ever seen octopus in that store.) She replied, “No, but follow me,” and pointed to a new line they’ve just started carrying, which included frozen squid.

What was in the package

I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for several years, a long time ago, and I used to get fresh squid often (and, yes, I know how to clean it). This frozen kind is imported from Thailand and comes already cleaned. (But with tentacles! I love the tentacles!)

The obvious choice for cooking it is to fry it, which is about as simple as it gets: cut the tubular bodies into rings, dredge all the pieces in flour and fine crumbs, fry until golden in hot oil, add salt and serve. I’m sure most of us have had those in a restaurant or pub somewhere, and they do taste good.

But I wanted a “real” meal, not just tasty munchies, so I started hunting and found that Maida Heater had an interesting recipe in her 1973 cookbook, The Classic Italian Cookbook, which I’ve had a copy of for years (love her blender pesto recipe!). Her stuffed squid recipe is simple in terms of flavor, with plenty of garlic. Some of the steps kind of mystify me (do I really have to sew the squid bodies shut so the stuffing won’t fall out?) so I came up with a few variations of my own.


STUFFED SQUID WITH TOMATOES AND WINE 
a la Maida Heater

Ingredients: 

6 squid, cleaned (the number you use will depend on their size--Maida Heater said her squid measured 5-6")

Stuffing:

1 Tblsp olive oil
2 Tblsp parsley, finely chopped
1 whole egg, lightly beaten
2-1/2 Tblsp freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup fine, dry, unflavored breadcrumbs
salt and freshly ground pepper

Cooking liquid:

olive oil (enough to generously coat your pan)
4 whole cloves garlic, peeled
1/2 cup canned tomatoes (Italian if you have them) coarsely chopped, with their juice (this amount seemed kind of skimpy to me, so I added a bit more)
1/2 tsp finely chopped garlic (I usually prefer to use a garlic press)
1/4 cup dry white wine

Instructions:

Mince the tentacles (how often do I get to say that?). Mix together all the stuffing ingredients and blend until fairly smooth. Add enough olive oil to make the mixture shiny (and not too dry).

Minced tentacles!

Fill the squid sacks. I was lucky enough to find some disposable pastry bags in Ireland, so I used one of those to fill the squids, and it turned out to be the perfect size. (And disposable! No washing!)

Then Maida said that we were supposed to secure the open end of each squid by sewing it closed with a darning needle—I vetoed that. Instead I closed the open end with a wooden toothpick. Okay, the stuffing leaked out of some of them, but I wasn’t about to perform surgery on all the little critters. One note: the squids shrink when you cook them, so do not overstuff!

In a skillet large enough to hold the stuffed squid in a single layer, add enough olive oil to coat the bottom well and heat over medium-high heat. Add the whole garlic cloves and sauté until they are golden, then discard them and add the stuffed squid to the pan. 

Brown the squid on all sides, then add the chopped tomatoes and their juice, the chopped garlic, and the wine. 

Stir, then cover tightly and cook over low heat for 30-40 minutes (or less, if your squid are small, which mine were). They should be tender when poked with a fork.

Remove the cooked squid to a cutting board and let them rest for a few minutes. Remove the toothpicks (don’t forget!), then Maida said to cut the squid bodies into half-inch slices. Mine were tiny after cooking, so I left them whole. Arrange on a platter or individual plates.  Warm up the sauce in the skillet and pour it over the sliced squid. Serve immediately.

For some reason that escapes me, Maida suggested serving these with steamed potatoes. Seems an odd choice to me. Rice or pasta would work well, and I chose orzo.

If I could find larger squid, I’d go with them. As it was, the results were a bit messy, but they definitely tasted good.

I'm still up for trying to cook octopus, if I ever find any.

Small update: the 12th Orchard Mystery now has a name: Nipped in the Bud! It will be released in print format by Beyond the Page Press at the end of October. Any day now we will have a cover for it!

www.sheilaconnolly.com

Squid Risotto

by Sheila Connolly

For those of you who don’t like eating things with tentacles, stop right here, because I’m going to talk about…squid.

You don’t see them very often in this country.  I stumbled on a batch at our local supermarket, imported all the way from China, and I grabbed them because I like squid.

I first ate them over forty years ago, at a Chinese restaurant in Boston—but I didn’t even know they were squid then. We’ve probably all had them as bar food (where they're labeled "calamari") or a starter course, batter-dipped and deep fried, and those are undeniably tasty if done well (crisp, not soggy), but they’re more coating than squid.

I lived in California for a decade, where squid were easy to come by, and I learned to clean and cook them then. It’s kind of a pain to clean them, but my new ones came already cleaned. And I was reminded of how much I like them when I had them in a seafood dish in Italy last summer: the tentacle end was about the size of my thumbnail. Lovely.

When I bought this batch, the nice fish lady (who I chat with every time I’m there) asked, do you want the tentacles? I said, of course—that’s the best part. (If you like a bit of crunch, that is.)

These are kind of small squid, the bodies less than six inches long, ready to cut up. The only real warning with cooking squid is not to overcook them, or you’ll find you’re eating rubber bands.

I decided to make a risotto with them. Risotto is a dish I avoided for years, because it sounded like too much work—all that stirring, you know.  But I’ve come to appreciate the way the rice absorbs the liquid, far more than when you cook it the regular way, and the whole becomes rich and creamy without adding any extra fat or cream. I am now a risotto fan, and you can add almost anything you like (preferably at the end, so you don’t weight down the mixture and interfere with that critical absorption, although you can cook it with mushrooms from the beginning if you like).

Squid Risotto

1 lb cleaned squid
1 Tblsp olive oil
2 tsp oregano (fresh if you have it)
1/2 tsp rosemary, chopped (ditto, but go easy on it because the fresh stuff is pungent)
Pinch of dried red pepper flakes
4 cloves garlic, minced (I use a garlic press because I’m too lazy to chop the things)
6 cups fish stock or diluted clam juice (note: you can buy canned fish stock, or fish bouillon cubes, or fish stock paste—your choice)
1-1/4 cups (1/2 lb) Arborio rice (not regular or instant rice)
3/4 cup parsley, chopped

Pat the squid dry. Chop off the tentacles, if they’re still attached. Slice the bodies (that tubey thing) into 1/4” strips lengthwise; quarter the tentacle clumps lengthwise. Season with salt and pepper.

Heat 1 tsp of the olive oil in a non-stick skillet until it is hot but not smoking. Sauté the oregano, rosemary, pepper flakes and 1 tsp of the garlic for about 30 seconds. Add the squid pieces and sauté, stirring constantly, until they turn opaque and curl, about 1 minute. Do not overcook! Place the pieces in a sieve over a bowl to catch any juices, and set aside.

When you’re ready to start the rice part, combine the squid juices with the fish stock in a saucepan and bring to a simmer.  Put on the back burner and keep at a low simmer throughout.

Heat the remaining 2 tsp olive oil in a large heavy saucepan over moderate heat until the oil is hot, then cook the remaining garlic, stirring frequently, until it is pale golden, about 2-3 minutes. Stir in the rice and cook, stirring constantly, until the rice is translucent, about 4-5 minutes. Add 1 cup of the simmering broth and cook at a strong simmer (not a boil!), stirring frequently, until that liquid is absorbed.

Add more broth, a half-cup at a time, and stir frequently, letting each addition be absorbed before adding more (no, you can’t cheat and just dump all the liquid in at once—then you’ll have rice glop, not risotto). Taste regularly after about 15 minutes to see if the rice is cooked.  It should be al dente but tender (if you still find a hard core in the center of the rice grains, keep cooking), and creamy looking. This should take 18-20 minutes, or maybe more. Don’t worry if there’s broth left over—let the rice tell you what it wants. When it’s soft and it stops absorbing liquid, it’s done.

 

When you’re ready to serve, add the squid and the parsley and cook until just heated through, about one minute.  Taste the mixture, and add salt and pepper to your taste. Serve immediately.

(And stop thinking about pictures like this!)

Coming February 4th! (No squid included.)