Calamari Spaghettini

So... I bought some Calamari last week, intending to fry it up just like my father in law does. But the day I took it out of the freezer, I just wasn't feeling all of that oil. So I decided to do something a little different, which I later realized is sort of a classic Italian dish: pan fried calamari with spaghetti (spaghettini in this case) and tomato sauce.  This is what I ended up with:

Ingredients (4 servings)

1 lb of cleaned calamari
A few good glugs of olive oil
Lemon Juice
4 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup fresh oregano
1 tsp dried chili flakes
1 bay leaf
S & P to taste
1/2 an onion
14 oz can tomato puree
1/4 cup of white or rose wine
2 tbsp flat leaf parsley
1/2 lb spaghettini
Fresh Parmesan

So I started off by chopping up all of the garlic and fresh herbs. I let the Calamari, which I sliced up thinly, sit in 2 of the cloves of garlic, 2 tbsp fresh oregano, 1/2 tsp chili flakes, salt and pepper, and a splash each of olive oil and lemon juice. Let it marinate for about a half an hour.

Fry up the onion, finely diced, in some olive oil until they are translucent. Add in the chili flakes, salt and pepper, and at the very end the rest of the garlic. De-glaze the pan with the wine, and cook it out for a minute. Add your tomatoes and the fresh oregano, on the stem if you want (you can just pick it out at the end) and the bay leaf.

 

 Turn up the heat and bring the sauce to a slow boil. Turn it down and let simmer for about a half an hour. When coming to about half way through cooking, put on the water for your pasta and salt it to the point that it tastes like the ocean. Cook the pasta until al' dente, but save about 3 or 4 ladles full of the water before you drain it. 

 When everything is just about done, fry up the calamari in about a tbsp more of olive oil. It's important that you don't overcook it, because it'll be sooo rubbery it won't even be worth eating. I ended up cooking it in batches so that it wouldn't be too watery (since it was frozen calamari), and it took about 2 minutes for each batch. If you do end up with water in the pan, add it right into the pasta, it's good flavour! I knew it was done because the outer edges of the rings sort of stuck out, making the ring sort of concave. Does that make sense? You can sort of see it in the above picture, and I also gave it another squirt of lemon juice and served it in a bowl on the side to add directly on top of he pasta so it wouldn't disappear into the tomato sauce .

So, I like to put the pasta into a big bowl, and serve it family style. Add in a few splashes of olive oil so it doesn't stick together. Also add in the reserved pasta water, some tomato sauce, fresh parsley and lots of Parmesan. Give it a good stir, and then top it with more parsley and cheese, and serve it up with the calamari on each plate!

 

This is how much wine my husband poured himself because he saw I wouldn't have a full glass.... He's so funny.... And yes, that's his GI Joe shirt in the background.

Enjoy!

French Baguette-ish

This is pretty key recipe to have if you want to be eating Mediterranean style. Remember when I said there was a lot of conflicting information about the diet, depending on different resources? Wellll... here's one: there are a bunch of websites out there claiming that people in the region eat mainly whole grains and low-fat dairy. Um, no. A variety of different grains, perhaps. Definitely not low-fat dairy. I think my Greek in-laws would be sick if I ever tried to feed them whole grain pasta. And no, they are not the exception. But I digress..

By the way, why would you make baguette when you can pick one up at the store? Well... some days I tend to agree. But I have 3 reasons:

1. It's fresher and therefore tastier.
2. It has absolutely no chemicals in it - most baguettes at our local grocery stores do tend to have preservatives in them.
3. It's wa-a-ay cheaper. We usually pay 3-4 dollars in Quebec for a baguette of a decent size. This recipe is certainly under 50 cents.

The recipe I use for French Baguette from this book here by Rob Wanless:

I don't feel like sesame seeds are part of French Baguette... but I know greeks put them on all of their breads! Hence the term "Baguette-ish."

For the Bread Machine (could easily be adapted for hand mixing):

Run the following ingredients on the dough cycle in this order - wet, dry, make a well in flour, yeast in well:

Ingredients:

1 C water
2 1/2 C all-purpose flour
1 T rye flour
2 t yeast
1 1/2 t quick-rise yeast

After a few minutes you get something like this:

But then it mixes quite a bit more, and actually is a very wet dough. This is normal, and Wanless actually suggests wetting your hands when you will form the dough later on. 

On a pretty heavily floured surface, form the dough into a ball, like this:

What I did next is role it into an oblong shape that was about 4-5" wide, and 1/2" or so thick.

Roll up the dough pretty tightly to make a long baguette shape, sort of like you would a jelly-roll. My ends sort of smushed together on their own, but make sure they seal up, pinching fingers at the ready!

And then I cut it in two, because there was no way that would fit on my baking sheet. They were sprinkled with water before they went on a cornmeal covered baking sheet until they doubled, in my case I preheated my oven after maybe a half an hour, making it about 40 minutes.

There, don't they look comfy underneath that dish towel?

Then, cut 3-4 diagonal 1/4" slits in each baguette so they don't suffocate in that oven! I brushed on egg wash (1 egg yolk + 2 tsp water) and sprinkled with LOTS of sesame seeds.

And this is how they came out of the oven. Wanless says bake on 500° F for 25-30 minutes with a pan of hot water underneath, until well cooked. Here's the thing. This is time number two I make this bread. The first time it came out black. Deliciously popcorn-like, but black. This time, I ended up pulling it out after 20 minutes. As you can see still dark, but not over-done.

Tonight, I enjoyed my bread with some pasta al'arrabiata and a nice glass of Little Penguin Merlot:

Ok, but seriously though, that piece of bread is huge. In reality, I ripped the baguette in half for the picture, but then I only ate half of the half... Let's get serious people, this is a blog about weight loss!