AfterTaste (by Sherry)

I had a dinner party recently with four friends of mine and while I typically like to impress guests with fancy, “gourmet” recipes, I decided instead to stick to dishes I could make: 1) with my eyes closed and 2) a little bit ahead of time. I’m notorious for greeting my guests in a bath robe and an apron, not having given myself enough time to get dressed. One of my friends was bringing baked brie so at least hors d’oeuvres were no longer my responsibility and another friend was bringing dessert so I just had to focus on an appetizer, main dish, and salad (I like to end things with a salad, not to be “Italian,” just because I don’t like people getting too full before the main course).

For an appetizer, I served fried calamari with a garlic, lemon, paprika mayo. For the main course, my go-to make-ahead dish, spaghetti and meatballs and for the salad, I kept it simple with baby spinach with herbed goat cheese and a lemon vinaigrette.

The calamari was really what I was most excited to cook seeing as I’ve never made fried calamari before. For some reason, and I think other people may agree, cooking seafood used to seem so daunting to me. I would play it safe and stick to just fish or shrimp. In the past few years, however, I’ve discovered that seafood often can be the easiest and quickest to cook. The cleaning may intimidate some people (it intimidated me), but don’t be afraid to ask your fishmonger to do the cleaning for you. It’s what they are there for! So, determined to make fried calamari Saturday evening, I scoured various websites (chowhound.com, epicurious.com, foodnetwork.com) for calamari recipes and took what I felt were the best aspects of each with respect to ease, complexity, and, of course, flavor. Here is the recipe I ended up “creating” for the fried calamari (I just winged it with the dipping sauce).

Fried Calamari

Serves 5-6

1 1/2 lb. cleaned calamari (also known as small squid)
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbs. garlic powder
2 tsp. cayenne pepper (or however much, depending on your spice tolerance)
2 tsp. hot paprika
Canola or vegetable oil
Salt and pepper

• Rinse squid in a colander under cold water, making sure to get rid of any grit that may be on the squid.
• Slice the bodies of the squid in cross sections so you wind up with rings. Be aware of some of the tops of the squid. They can have sharp, thorn-like protrusions. Discard them if you find any. Keep tentacles intact unless they are very large, in which case cut them in half. Some of the tentacles may have one extra long tentacle, cut this off and throw it away.
• On a large plate, mix flour, garlic powder, cayenne pepper, approximately 2 tbs. salt, and (depending on your preference) a good amount of cracked black pepper.
• Heat up enough oil that it comes up 3 ½ - 4 inches up from the bottom of the pot on high heat until it’s very hot, approximately four minutes. Test the oil by dropping in a pinch of flour. If the flour burns up right away or the pot is smoking, the oil is too hot. Lower the flame and wait for the temperature to drop slightly. If the flour just floats there and then sinks to the bottom, it’s not hot enough. Keep waiting and test in another minute.
• When the oil is hot enough, grab a handful of the sliced calamari and toss it into the flour. Roll the pieces around so they are well-coated and then make sure to shake off all the excess flour (you can do it with your hands or using whatever spider/basket-like tool you use for fishing out fried food) before carefully lowering it into the hot oil. Once the calamari hits the oil, stir them around so they do not stick.
• After approximately 1-2 minutes, they should be golden brown (not lightly brown, but golden brown or else it won’t get crispy enough). Take out the pieces of cooked squid and place them on a paper towel lined plate. Taste a piece before you salt it, it may already be fairly salty from the seasoned flour.
• Continue frying in small batches, being careful not to overcrowd the pot. Don’t worry about keeping them warm in the oven. Just keep the paper lined plate by the stove and they should stay warm for you for a good 15 minutes.

Garlic Lemon Mayonnaise Dipping Sauce

1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 clove of garlic, finely minced and mashed
1 pinch paprika
1 pinch cayenne
2 tbs. lemon juice
2 tsp. lemon zest
Salt and pepper

• Mix all of these in a bowl and serve alongside calamari.