A Man Walks Into a Pub with a Squid...

Let's get right into it. Tonight's dish was from the "Everyday Seafood" chapter of "Everyday Antipasti" and was none other than Fried Calamari!! YUM. I first tried calamari at my grandparent's wedding anniversary back when I was in middle school and have been in love with it ever since. But, of course, being the health nut that I am, I simply could not fry my dish tonight. Believe me, I really wanted to. Especially because I have never fried something without the help of a commercial deep fryer. But I knew I would pay for it tomorrow morning when I would have cement legs on my morning run.

Therefore, I made Faux-Fried Calamari. Hungry Girl does this to her recipes all the time. Rather than frying the food, she bakes it. She also coats it in crushed up Fiber One cereal (honestly, don't knock it till you try it), but that seemed way to "un-Italian" for a recipe out of Everyday Italian.

I started by preheating the handy-dandy toaster oven to 400 degrees. I then took my defrosted squid bodies out of the refrigerator. Though I love eating calamari, handling it while raw is a completely different story. When squid are live, I have a terrible irrational fear of them. The thought of one of their tentacles latching on to my arm with their little suction cups makes me shudder (in fact, I just did as I typed that). Thankfully, the squid that I had bought did not come with tentacles. I feel many tears would have been shed if I had had to handle those.

What you may not know unless you've worked with squid before, is that raw squid has and absolutely disgusting texture. When the bodies were frozen, it was perfectly fine to touch them. But once they had defrosted, my God they were the most slimy, gummy things you have ever touched. I DEFINITELY shuddered when I first picked one up. I also made this weird noise that was a gross between nervous laughter and surprise. Thankfully, this was early in the morning and everyone was asleep.

I cut the bodies into half-inch thick rings, then worked on their coating. In Giada's recipe, she simply dredges them in flour and parsley, then sticks them in the oil to fry away. Considering I was baking these, I wanted a little more coating. At first, I followed the recipe by dredging them in flour and parsley. Then, I tossed them in some bread crumbs. Unfortunately, having been coated in flour first, the bread crumbs didn't really stick too well. I skipped them flour on a few rings just as an experiment.

I then baked the calamari for about 20 minutes. Giada's recipe recommends using her Marinara Sauce to dip them in, but I didn't have the time to make any tonight or last night. Therefore, I made a poor man's version. I took some tomato paste and watered it down to a sauce consistency and it was just fine.

Once the calamari were done, I gave it a taste, and was satisfied. It was definitely not the fried calamari that I was used to, but it was still very good. I dipped them in the sauce which was good, but I actually preferred them without it! The sauce overpowered the squid flavor (which is not as horrifying as it sounds. It's quite good). The coating was just enough to give it some crunch without filling my arteries with fattening oil :)

Overall, I think I could perfect THIS version of Giada's appetizer with a little more work, but it went well for my first time around! I'm now off to make some ricotta cookies as a gift for a friend (my cooking skills are really all I have to offer on a college student budget). Wish me luck with this new recipe!