I haven’t written in a while and I do feel guilty about it. That’s how it goes when the writing follows a great food experience. I wish I could do that more frequently. Anyway, I hope you’ll enjoy this dish I cooked last weekend. Here’s what happened.

I went to the supermarket to do the usual weekly shopping and decided it was time I passed by the fishmonger as well. Weather is nice, full spring, for sure, some good stuff must be coming out of the sea. I get there and what do I see? Fresh squid. But not the wee ones. The real ones. 2-3 pounders. “mmmhhhh” was my first thought. My brain went immediately into “assembly” mode:

• What can I do with that?
• How should I cook it?
• What other goodies should I add to?

At first, I thought about a stew but then I saw the mussels on the side, there, just sitting quietly in their box, trying to avoid eye contact. “Too late, pals!”. There it was. Illumination. Pasta with mussels and squid. Now we were getting somewhere. Think about it: fuming spaghetti, with bits of squid and fresh tomato, all topped with splendid mussels in their shells. Still, I felt that something was missing. Think. Think. Think. Then I remembered that mussels go splendidly with strong, salty tastes, like pecorino. Have no pecorino. Have bottarga. Jackpot!

You might wonder: what is bottarga? It’s very simple, it’s roe. Caviar of the poor. There are two kinds sold in Italy: tuna and grey mullet roe. Tuna is more expensive, yet tastier and more sought for. I do have both, but my tuna one is fresh, thus I need to use it before it gets destroyed.

Anyway, we now have a dish in the planning and we can start cooking. First, we need to clean the squid and the mussels. Mussels are simple. First of all check that they are alive. To do that, see that they are closed when taking them off the bag. If they are open, “bang” them against the table and make sure that they “react” by closing the valves. If that doesn’t happen a few bangs, throw that shell away. Once they are closed, remove the “beard” by pulling it off the beast.

Squids are a bit more difficult. I asked my fishmonger to clean mine, but he didn’t a proper job and I had ink all over my kitchen. So make sure that everything is removed properly and keep the tentacles!

Start boiling the water for the pasta.

OK, now: prepare a base for the mussels. I used a big deep pot where I added some olive oil, to finely chopped sticks of celery, to chopped leeks, 2 cloves of garlic and 2 glassesand let it all blend and golden up. When that was the case (about 10 minutes), I added 2 glasses of chardonnay (or any white wine you have around) and threw in the mussles. Close the lid and cook slowly for about 15 minutes or until you think they are cooked. The lid is important, as it allows for a proper “sterilisation” of the mussel shells, by entrapping the high temperature steam in the pot.

Next, let’s prepare the squid. First of all, take the squid and chop it into small pieces (like 1×0.5 cm for example), including tentacles. Wash it all nicely under a lot of water. Now, in a wide and tallish pan, crush 2 cloves of garlic, add 2-3 tbsp of olive oil and warm it up. Cut a few thin slices of the bottarga, chop into as finely as you can and add it to the oil/garlic mix. Stir for 5 minutes and then add the squid and half a glass of white wine.

Cook at high temp for 5 minutes, turn down the heat and wait until the next step is ready. In the meantime, get some tomatoes and chop them finely.

Now, it gets “complicated” At this point, the water should be boiling, thus throw the pasta in. Take the mussels off their broth and toss them in the frying pan. Pass the broth through a sieve and put the liquid back in the pot. When the pasta is half cooked (let’s say 5 minutes) take it off that water and finish cooking it in the mussels broth. Just before it’s ready, drain it, put it back in the pan, add the fish together with the finely diced tomatoes.

Ready. Crack open another bottle of white (I love Chablis or Greco di Tufo with these dishes) and enjoy. I loved it!!! Foodgasmic!!!!

Here’s the “precise” list of ingredients:

- Olive oil

- 4 cloves of garlic

- 500 grams of spaghetti

- 1.5 kg of fresh mussels

- 1kg of fresh squid

- 5 tomatoes

- 3 slices of tuna bottarga

- 2 sticks of celery

- 2 leeks

- half a bottle of white wine

- a lot of hunger

- a love for good food

Article first published as Pasta With Squid, Mussels, Tuna Roe And Fresh Tomato on Blogcritics.

Welcome to the year 2010!!!!

We had a very relaxing and easy going evening yesterday. But let’s skip sraight to business. As I was mentioning 2 days ago, I had a sea-creature based dinner in mind, and that’s what happened. Fantastic t’was. Tried a new receipe with a creature I had never cooked before. I decided to get some oysters first, and to folow them with an octopus dish. Oysters are always easy to prepare and very tasty with some horseradish (white wasabi) and 1 or 2 drops of Tabasco. Great!

Now, let’s move to the stew. I bought an octopus that was about 1 kg. Was already cleaned up, so that make life easier. I did check about 30 different receipes, as I ahd not much of an idea on how to cook the beast. I finally started over salivating when I read this guy in an Italian website. Here’s a translation and some easy instructions for you non-italian speacking friends:

Earthware Octopus Stew

You’ll need an octopus, rinsed and cut into bit-sized chunks. Beofre chopping it, I quickly brought it to a boil for about 1-2 minutes, let it cool down and tried to remove as much skin as plossible.

After that procedure, chop a red onion (on the big side), toss it into a pot (preferably clay), together with 3 table spoons of olive oil, 3 crushed garlic cloves and a bit of red hot chilli peppers (as much as you like). Let it golden on the fire for about 4-5 minutes.

Now, add the octopuss together with 4-5 diced tomatoes (Pachino preferably), about 60-100 g pitted black olives, and a glass of white wine. Bring the whole thing to the boil, then put on a lid, turn the ehat to low and cook for about 45′ (or until the beast is soft when pierced witha  fork).

Once it is ready, get four slices of home-style bread, toast it until nicely crips and golden and rub a garlic clove onto it (like if you were making a bruschetta – that’s brusketta, for whoever did not read my previous post), and put it at the bottom of a bowl. Now, overlay your stew on top of it and enjoy it!

I washed it down with a Chardonnay, again from the Chateau St. Jean cellar (california). I prefered their Cabernet Sauvignon.

Happy New Year to everyone!!!!

tshcuessi

Fred

PS: total cost if the dinner ~ 15 US$