Two-Minute Calamari Sicilian Lifeguard Style

Like Mario, I too have never met a Sicilian lifeguard, nor do I foresee myself ever meeting one in the near future. But our esteemed author felt that if one was to cook up a pot of calamari, this, as explained in this newest post, is how they would do it. 

Sicily is about as southern italian as you can get. So southern that geographically it is closer to Tunisia and Morocco than Milan. So the inspiration for this dish combined the spice of Sicilian food with the sweet ingredients of Northern Africa. 

I wanted to save this dish for the summer to match the warm climate and spicy food of Sicily, but with all of the single digit weather up here lately, I needed something to heat me up and make me long for warmer days.  

Calamari is not one of my favorite fish in the world either, mainly because it's so hard to find a place that can cook it properly. Thirty seconds too little or too much and the calamari may as well be rubber bands. Many restaurants around my neck of the woods bread and fry the tubes and tentacles and offer a tomato based dipping sauce. Regardless of how it is prepared, this Italian staple is a great fish to add to your repertoire. Mastering it's cookery will impress any dinner guest without killing your food budget. And because it cooks so quickly, it makes a perfect meal option for even the busiest of food snobs. 

Checking my ingredients, I see that the only real prep that i need for this recipe is to slice a few scallions, cut the calamari tubes into 1/4 inch rounds, and halve the tentacles.

I also need another batch of Mario's basic tomato sauce. This should be no problem for you following along with me at home because you made that big batch of sauce that I told you to make last week right? I saved what I had left from the last recipe in this blog series so I'm ready to cook. And the cooking will be quick. Surprisingly quick. 

I start by boiling some salted water and add Israeli couscous, cooking for two minutes and then blanching in an ice bath. 

Next I grab my sauté pan and heat olive oil until smoking. I then add pine nuts, currants, caperberries, and red pepper flakes and sauté until the pine nuts are golden brown. 

I now add the tomato sauce and couscous and boil. 

The calamari is now ready to be thrown into my sauté pan. It only needs two to three minutes to cook, or until the calamari turns opaque. I adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. 

The dish is now ready to be plated with some sliced fresh scallions. 

Is that all? Is that really all I have to do? Easy peasy. 

I loved the taste and texture of the couscous with the calamari. There was a bit of a kick from the pepper flakes but nothing too overwhelming. When I watched Mario make this on YouTube with Eric Ripert, he added the jalapeño pesto that I made in the last recipe. I should have added that to this dish for more heat. The flavor would have elevated this recipe from an 8 to a 10. Still, you've got to love how simple it was to put this together. 

The next post is inspired entirely but my recent visit to Whole Foods Market. In fact, the main ingredient jumped out at me as soon as I walked through the front door. Until next time....

Baccala Mezzalune with Golden Tomatoes and Green Olives

Despite all of the rumors, I am still alive. I will say, though, it was a close one. In between my last blog entry and this one I have lived through 'Snow-maggeddon' or 'Snow-pocalypse', got crazy sick not once but twice to where my taste buds were nearly dead, and have snow-blowed measurable snow more times than I care to count. But it's great to be back. 

So far, my new year's resolution of four posts a month and 50 recipes completed by March is not looking so good. Two posts in two months is a poor showing. I need to get working here. The idea is not about rushing to get this project over with, but I do have a dinner at Babbo that my wife promised upon completion, which I would like to attend before 2077. 

I'm going to continue with the last posts main ingredient, baccala. I froze the left-over fish for this very purpose. I'm hoping that this recipe makes me love salt cod, because so far I'm not much of a fan. 

Looking at the mise-en-place for this recipe I see that I once again get to make the fresh pasta recipe. I used my KitchenAid mixer instead of the well method this time and it came out just fine. Call me old fashioned, but I still prefer using the well method. 

Next up is to make the jalapeño pesto that goes into the filling for the pasta. This is another signature Batali recipe that I've been dying to try. It's also used in a few other recipes throughout the book. It's easy to make so I thought that I would include the prep work here instead of devoting an entire post to it. 

In a food processor I combine jalapeños, sliced almonds, and a diced red onion. It gets pulsed until puréed, then I drizzle in some extra-virgin olive oil to emulsify. The key point to making this pesto pop is to leave the pepper seeds in to give it the heat. 

The pesto tastes amazing, and now I need a batch of tomato sauce. I've already covered the making of this in a previous post so I won't waste any blog real estate covering it again. 

Now I can begin actually making the recipe. Mezzalune refers to the shape of the pasta meaning 'half-moon' in Italian. The filling is almost classic Portuguese. I start by breaking the baccala into small chunks and add it to a sauce pan with diced potatoes, the pesto, water, and milk. This gets simmered until tender enough to resemble a thick Ragu. Once finished, the filling gets chilled. 

Next I get to roll out the pasta dough into thin sheets using my new pasta rolling set for the KitchenAid that my wife got me for Christmas. OMG it's so much easier to make pasta now! 

I now use a round biscuit cutter to cut circles out of the dough, put a spoonful of the cod filling in each circle, and fold them all in half to resemble a half moon. Mario notes that you'll want a tight seal on these because any open space will allow the pasta cooking water to get in and destroy your rav's. 

Speaking of pasta water, I put a pot on the stove and bring it to a boil. 

I then put a sauté pan on high heat and put in some olive oil and cook the golden tomatoes and green olives until the tomatoes start to burst. 

Next, some of the tomato sauce goes in the pan while I drop the mezzalune in the boiling water. They should only need about four minutes to cook being fresh pasta and all. 

The mezzalune are now done and I toss them in the sauté pan and add more extra-virgin olive oil and shredded parsley to the mix off the heat and toss. 

Time to plate. 

The smell is amazing. 

Okay Mario you have converted me. I am now a fan of salt cod. 

My wife and I loved these pastas. There was the saltiness of the cod, brininess of the olives, acid from the tomatoes, and just a slight kick from the addition of the jalapeño pesto. The smell from these cooking brought me back to the dining room of my great-grandmother's house all over again. Outstanding!

I am keeping some of these in my freezer for dinners. The prep involved in making this particular shape of ravioli was a little labor intensive, so if I had to do it over I would probably make a different shape. But all together, this was an amazing recipe!

I don't want to make any food promises for my next post that I can't keep right now, so I'll leave by saying that the next post will be.....a surprise. Until next time...