Iron Chef at Home: Battle Squid
Several months ago, I bought a 2.5 lb block of frozen, cleaned squid to use as a new ingredient. I opted to go with the whole squids, since precut rings seemed to limit what I could do with the ingredient. I finally decided to defrost the batch and get creative.
After starting the defrosting process in the fridge a day or two before, I started thinking about creative recipes. However, when I decided to finally get cooking, I had not gotten a chance to gather ingredients at a store, so I was limited to what I had in the house.
After we put our son down to sleep, my wife stepped out to run an errand. My challenge: One hour to get the squid cooked, plated, and ready to serve the moment she returned. Also, I had to make three dishes and use the entire 2.5 lb block of squid.
Since I am trying to eat healthy, frying the squid as a traditional calamari appetizer was not an option. I've always been partial to calamari marinara, a tender stewed squid in tomato sauce, anyway, so immediately added that as a dish to the menu. I also wanted to use some of the veggies we recenlty bought to make a bean salad, so I started listing out ingredients for a chilled salad that contained calimari rings. Finally, I decided to reserve two whole squids to be marindated and broiled.
I immediately began boiling two pots of water and began washing and dicing veggies. I think a key to a cooking an improv meal is to get a pot of water going right up front. You'll use it to blanche some vegetables, boil pasta or rice or quinoa, or quick thaw a frozen meat. Plus, if you don't use it, its a pot of water... you can dump it, or if you're environmentally concious, just let it cool and then water some plants with it.
Once the basic prep was done, I got started on the the marinara. I sauteed diced up squid for a few minutes with onions, garlic and basil, added the tomatoes, and let the sauce simmer the entire time I focused on the other dishes.
I then marinated the while squids in a mixture of garlic, soy sauce, balsamic, red wine, worchestershire sauce and hot sauce, and set into the fridge for the next 30 or so minutes. This left me the majority of the rest of the time to focus on the chilled salad.
It was easy to prepare squid for a salad. Squid should either be cooked for a very short or very long period of time. The marinara is a good example of long.... it will simmer for quite some time and will end up being quite tender... however for a salad, a quick boil is the way to go. I dropped sliced up squid into boiling water for no more than about a minute, then threw it into ice water to stop the cooking process. I then combined it with diced veggies, sea salt, quinoa, and chick peas, and marindated in a dressing of EVOO, hot sauce (lots of it), and white wine vinegar. That was then put into the fridge, and while I was in there, I pulled out the marinating whole squid...
I transferred the marinated squid to a pan for broiling, and then took the marinate and began heating in a small sauce pan. I broiled the squid for about two minutes on each side untl the meat was firm but not tough. I continued to bring the marinade to a boil and then reduced to a nice thick syrup that I used as a sauce for the finished, sliced broiled squid.
After plating the broiled squid, the salad had a nice chill to it, and the sauce was done. I had used the remaining pot of boiling water to make some pasta for the calamari sauce. Ideally, I would have premade the quinoa for a cold salad, but since I made it fresh at the top of the hour, it was still warm and thus made the salad a bit more 'room temp' than I would have liked (but it was amazing the next day for lunch!)
The ingredients (Sorry, no mixing ratios.... choose your own!):
Chilled Calamari and Chick Pea Salad
Broiled Marinated Calamari
*Roughly equal parts of these ingredients, less of the worchester and hot sauces...
1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes
