Saturday, April 27, 2013

Octopus and Squid

The April cooking class was all about seafood.  There are a lot of reasons I enjoy joining in on these classes, a day out, learning the Sicilian ways to cook food, and trying food that I might like but would never take a chance on and order off a menu.  This month covered all three. 

This is the restaurant that was kind enough to host our class.
This is the spread that greets you as you walk into the door.

Our mission this month was to learn how to make octopus salad, fried calamari and fried alici, which is essenitally the anchovy fish fresh, before it is put into cans.  None of which would I ever consider ordering for dinner.  I am not sure I would have paid for the class if I didn't know that in addition to what we make, we get a ton of other food.  I knew I would eat well if I liked the new seafood or not!

Up close and personal with the raw octopus

The squid....

and the alici
I don't have a lot of experience with cooking fish which is already cleaned and fileted, and I have no experience with prepping any kind of fish!  It was definitely a new experience....



We started with the octopus.  In case you are planning on cooking one, there is such a thing as too fresh.  These guys need to be really dead before you cook them or they will be tough and chewy.  To cook, you throw into some seasoned boiling water and let boil for 45 minutes.  When the come out, they look like this......
The good thing about the octopus, is that you eat everything, except the eyes and the beak

for the salad you chop it all up into cubes

then you add some lemon juice, olive oil and some seasoning.  That's it, octopus salad.  It was good, but definitely an acquired taste, mostly due to the texture.
 After we made our salad, we got a demonstration of cleaning the squid.

Our chef demonstrating how you snap the head.....

then yank out the insides.....

then pull out the bone....

peel the skin off....

then cut it into rings
We had the option to try this with a squid on our table.  I chose not to, but we had a couple people who did.  The main thing with squid is to not pop the ink sac while cleaning it.......






This is what it looks like if you pop the ink sac.  The good thing is that, while low quality, the ink is edible.











Finally we got to prep the alici.




The chef showed us how to snap off the head and pull out the guts, then run our finger down the center to get the bones out, or you can leave them in and just munch these tiny fish like corn on the cob around the bones.  To the right is the raw alici salad that they season with lemon and olive oil, allowing the acid in the lemon to cook it up.  We didn't eat this because it is illegal to sell in Italy due to some bacteria or something that  might be in in that can kill you.  Restaurants can serve this way if they flash freeze the fish first then thaw, but many choose just to not make the salad.




Finally we got to bread the squid and alici.......


 At last, it was time to eat!



grilled alici, OK, but too many bones, not enough meat.

pasta with mussels, clams, and tiny shrimp, YUM!

pasta with swordfish

fried alici, I didn't try....too much work and I didn't like it that much.

I think they said this was sorbet, but it tasted like granite to me.  It was mandarin orange and lemon, delicious!

 *BTW, all the dishes you see here are different patterns of Caleca.  I thought it was really neat that they had a variety of patterns.  I might have done that if I had thought of it, but I like my rainbow of colors.





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