Food Lust People Love: calamari

Despite the title, this wonderful tapas dish also has smoked bacon pan-fried to crispy nuggets of deliciousness, along with the chilies, garlic and squid. And please don’t forget the squeeze of fresh lemon juice at the end. It elevates this dish to brilliant like a flood of hot sunshine on a sparkling white Majorcan beach.

Food Lust People Love: A wonderfully fragrant tapas dish with smoked bacon pan-fried to crispy nuggets of deliciousness, along with the chilies, garlic and squid. You'll love this Squid with Garlic Chili Olive Oil.

Sunday Supper is getting the party started this week with tapas recipes. Delicious bites or snacks that are made especially for eating with drinks. And since, as I mentioned in my #CocktailDay post, this is my birthday week, I'm going to pretend that they are all for my own virtual party. Yay! Such fun!

When we were living in Paris, we took advantage of charter flights to head south and get away from the cold, damp winters that extended way too long into months we felt should have been quite rightfully spring. I’ve already written about Portugal here but one of our other favorite holidays was to the island of Majorca. To date this is our only venture into Spanish territory but I remember it so fondly, with its fresh seafood, white sandy beaches and clear, aquamarine waters that I knew immediately what I wanted to cook when the tapas theme was announced for Sunday Supper.

Majorcan traditional cooking uses mostly seafood and pork, so a dish of bacon and squid, with some garlic and chilies was perfect! I don’t mean to imply that this dish is authentic in any way or that I remember eating it there. I do want to say that it brought me back, in a way that only the clean smell of the sea in seafood and a good imagination can. I can almost feel the sand between my toes.

That little blondie is our elder daughter - Majorca, 1994

Ingredients
4 oz or 115g smoked slab bacon
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 or 2 small red hot chilies
Olive oil
1 lb or 450g whole fresh squid (I prefer baby squid, if I can get them.) Or about 9 oz or 260g already cleaned and sliced squid rings.
Sea salt flakes
Small handful fresh parsley leaves
2 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves picked off
1/4 large lemon

Method
Slice your garlic thinly and split the red chilies in half lengthwise. Chop your parsley and fresh thyme. Set aside.

Chop your bacon into the small, slim chunks the French like to call lardons.

Pan-fry them with a good drizzle of olive oil over a low heat while you clean and slice the squid.

For those of you using squid rings, you can skip this next part. Move ahead to where we are making sure the bacon is golden and crispy.

To clean the squid, first grab hold of the part that has the tentacles and pull it out of the tube-y bit. (I tried to find the technical terms for you but I didn’t think they’d be helpful after all. Who would have known what the mantle is? Yeah, me either.)

You can discard the leggy body bits from the squid but I happen to like the look of the little tentacles once they are cooked. If you agree, cut that part off just below the eyes and discard the part with the eyes. The ink sac is in that part. If you happen to pierce it, just wash everything off with water and put to dry on a paper towel. The squid ink is harmless. In fact, a lot of cooks use it to color pasta or add it to sauces.

Run your finger around inside of the tube-y bit until you find the hard thing that feels and looks like plastic. Pull it out. It should be almost as long as your squid tube so if it breaks off short, fish around and get the rest of it out and discard.

See, that thing. Take it out and throw it away.

Go check on the bacon. It should be starting to render the fat and fry gently. Give it a stir.

If you do decide to keep the leggy bit, turn it over and pinch out the hard bit with the black spot in the center and discard it.

Go check on the bacon. Give it another stir and make sure it isn’t burning.

Now peel off all the colored stuff from the outside of the squid tubes. You can use your hands but the easiest way is to rub it off with dry paper towels and then discard them. Rinse your squid in clean water and put it on paper towels to dry.

Your squid is clean! Slice it into wide rings.

Direct your attention to the bacon and turn the heat up a little if it’s not golden and crispy yet.

When it is golden and crispy, add in the garlic and chilies.

Sauté briefly until the garlic starts to brown around the edges and then put all the squid in at once. Give it a good stir. The squid should turn white and start to curl up.

Now is the time to sprinkle with sea salt and then the parsley and thyme. Give the whole thing a good stir.

Add in another generous drizzle of olive oil. Flavored olive oil is the best for dipping bread in so don’t be shy!

Squeeze in the juice of your lemon, give the dish one more good stir, and serve with slices of a fresh crusty loaf of French baguette.