Calamari

Okay, so I'm sitting in a Longhorn restaurant with my sister and my mom last week in NJ. We're having a great time, lunch was delicious. We started off with these great semi-spicy shrimp (they reminded me a lot of the Bang Bang Shrimp at Bonefish Restaurant). We then start comparing the appetizers between the two restaurants and we end up talking about calamari. Now I haven't told you this yet, but my family is Italian. We celebrate Christmas Eve with no less than 7 fishes as is customary in a lot, if not most Italian households around the world. Every year my father buys, cleans and cooks calamari in homemade marinara sauce. He starts it early in the morning and cooks it all day, because any good Italian knows that you have to either cook calamari all day or flash cook it to achieve tenderness. Anything in between and all you have are rubber bands. I don't know about you, but I am mortified (and annoyed) when I go to a restaurant expecting to get fried calamari and end up getting an expensive plate of breaded rubber bands. That may be just me, but that's how I see it. My sister admits that after all these years of eating my dad's calamari she really likes fried calamari better, I personally like them both and for different reasons. Calamari Marinara is a totally different dish, served over a nice heap of pasta and you have a great stick to your ribs, warm you up from the inside out kind of meal. Fried Calamari is more of an appetizer that you get on a really big platter and share with friends over a few beer while standing at your favorite bar listening to great music.

So after all this you're thinking where is this crazy broad going with this, right?

Today was grocery shopping day and while in the seafood department I stumbled across some calamari tubes (the part that you usually see as rings, but uncut) so I bought them. My goal is to create a stuffing with shrimp and crab meat, insert it into the tubes, batter them, flash fry them and serve them as appetizers with dinner tomorrow night.

Do I have any idea how they will turn out? Absolutely not! But hey, when the inspiration strikes I have no choice but to either duck so I don't get bruised or grab on to it and ride it out till I am successful.

I'm sure you understand why I choose riding along to success.

I will post the final recipe and pictures tomorrow.

hugs,
dina