In this blog entry I bring you a recipe that could not be more traditional. It is squid in its own ink. However, we are going to give it a different touch by not using traditional ingredients such as white flour or solanaceous vegetables like peppers (although we will use dried tomatoes). If you follow this blog, you will already know that we define yin foods as those that are richer in water, larger (expanded), soft in texture, fast-growing, tropical, warm season, richer in potassium than in sodium, etc. In other words, although we are going to use tomatoes in this recipe, you will see that they are dehydrated. Why? Well, everything dehydrated is more yang, has very little water content and its nutrients and minerals are more concentrated. Here we go!
INGREDIENTS
- Cold pressed extra virgin olive oil
- 8 baby squid
- 1 onion
- 2 garlic
- 3 dried tomatoes (soaked for 30 minutes)
- 1 tbsp mirin
- Unrefined sea salt
- Squid ink (dissolved in 1 cup of water)
- 1 tbsp Kuzu (pueraria lobata)
PREPARATION
- First you have to clean the squid well. To do this, take the squid, pull the inside of the squid until everything comes out (including the hard parts), pull the feather and put your finger inside to extract all the contents of the inside. Remove the skin by simply pulling it off, remove the fins as well.
- Once you have removed all the skin and cleaned the squid, turn it inside out as if it were a sock. Now clean the inside of the squid as well. Use also the tentacles (cut them just below the eyes, clean as much skin as possible and remove the pincer) and the fins. You can use the tentacles and fins to stuff the squid, although I have not done so. Set everything aside in a bowl to rinse later.
- Once you have all the squid clean and well washed, add enough oil to a wide, deep frying pan (cast iron is best). Finely chop the garlic and dice the onion into small cubes. Chop the tomato or crush it with a hand blender and a little water.
Sauté the garlic and onion for 5 minutes with a pinch of salt until soft and “sweaty”. - Add the chopped sun-dried tomato and mirin. Cook for about 10 minutes with a lid on low heat so that it does not burn.
- Then add the ink dissolved in water, bring to the boil and add the squid.
- Cook for 30 minutes over low heat.
- Finally, dissolve the kuzu in a little cold water. Add it and mix well. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring gently to avoid lumps. When the kuzu has become transparent and thickened, it is ready.
- Turn off the heat and leave to stand for 1-2 minutes.
- You can separate the squid from the sauce and puree the sauce (although I did not do this).
- Serve the squid on a bed of sauce.
Enjoy!
See you in the next post of this blog.
Best regards.
