Belinda Jeffery offers us a beautifully light alternative to the sometimes overly heavy Christmas dishes – a zesty calamari salad – perfect for the summer holidays.
Now the weather has become quite steamy, I’m starting to pull out all my salad recipes, and topping the list of favourites at the moment is this lovely lemony calamari one. It’s so very light and zesty, and full of lovely flavours and textures with its curls of tender calamari, crunchy pale-green celery, the mild sweet bite of red onion, and little bursts of heat from the chillies.
Serves 4
2 small red chillies, seeded and sliced into very fine strips
4 large calamari tubes (or squid hoods), cleaned (they should be nice and white)
¼ – ½ red onion, very finely sliced (or more to taste)
3-4 celery stalks, very finely sliced on the diagonal
¼ cup roughly chopped flat-leaf parsley
Marinade:
90ml extra-virgin olive oil
2 small red chillies, finely chopped
4 large cloves garlic, finely chopped
Dressing:
⅓ cup (80ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice, strained
¼ – ⅓ cup (60 – 80ml) extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon small capers, rinsed and drained
1 clove garlic, crushed
Sea salt, to taste
To serve, optional: Slices of good sourdough or ciabatta bread that have been grilled or toasted and rubbed with a halved clove of garlic, then drizzled with good olive oil; flat leaf parsley sprigs and lemon or lime wedges.
Put the chilli strips in a small bowl of iced water. Cover it tightly and put it in the fridge. (If you’re wondering why I suggest to soak the chillies, it’s to take just a bit of the heat out of them as they’re being used as a garnish.)
For the marinade, whisk together the oil, chilli and garlic in a medium-sized bowl. Cut down one side of each calamari tube and open it out. Run your fingers over the calamari to check that no little bits of the quill are still attached – the quill feels hard and looks rather like a shard of fine, clear Perspex. Halve each piece lengthwise and use a sharp knife to score a diamond cross-hatch pattern on the inside, taking care not to cut all the way through. Put the calamari pieces into the marinade and swish them about so they’re well coated. Cover the bowl and put it in the fridge while you make the dressing.
Whisk all the dressing ingredients together in a large bowl, taste it and adjust the flavour to suit you, then set it aside.
Delicious for a light Christmas treat – calamari salad. Photography Rodney Weidland
There is a bit of an art to cooking calamari and much of it is in the timing. In general, it should either be cooked very, very rapidly or slowly and gently, anywhere in the middle and it becomes incredibly tough. In this particular dish it’s cooked quickly. So to cook it, heat a barbecue plate (or large, heavy frying pan) until it’s very, very hot – almost smoking. Add the calamari pieces, scored-side down, and cook them for 1 ½ minutes, pressing down on them occasionally with an egg slice or wide spatula. Now turn them over. As you do this they may start to curl, but don’t worry – as you turn each piece, press it flat for about ten seconds then let it roll, by which time it will be cooked. (If you are cooking the calamari in a frying pan, you may have to do this in batches.)
Remove the calamari pieces to a chopping board and slice the rolls into rounds about 1cm thick (if the pieces haven’t rolled, slice them into bite-sized squares). Toss them in the dressing until they’re well coated – you can leave them in it for up to 30 minutes if you like. Just before serving the salad, add most of the finely sliced onion, celery and parsley to the calamari and mix it in gently.
I sometimes just pile this up in bowls sprinkling it with the reserved onion strips, celery, parsley and chilli shreds. However to make it a bit more substantial, and to soak up the delicious dressing, sit a slice of garlic-rubbed toast on each plate, drizzle it with a smidgen of olive oil, then top it with some parsley sprigs. Divide the salad evenly among the four slices of toast. Garnish each one with a little of the reserved onion, celery and parsley, then sprinkle, sprinkle the chilled chilli shreds on top. Serve with lime wedges.
