New Year and Squid Ink?

Yes, I said squid ink but I’ll get to that later. In my Italian heritage, New Year’s feast consists of 13 kinds of fish – one for each month and one for luck and happiness. Now 13 kinds of fish is a crapload of food – unless you are feeding an Italian family, which are typically very large and always very hungry. Since I was cooking for 2 of us (and only one of us has the Italian appetite gene) I had to scale back. I desperately wanted clams since starting next week they are taboo for me to eat but alas Pacific Fresh Fish wasn’t going to get any in. BTW – they called us to tell us that and take a new order – yes THEY called US! (don’t you love small towns?) So instead I ordered an octopus and some Gulf fresh water prawns – I’m almost all set now.

Enter the squid ink. For Christmas I got 3 packages of squid ink – my favorite gift, in fact. You may find it an odd Christmas gift but I was absolutely delighted, especially since it is not available here on the tundra. Once again Pacific Fresh Fish managed to obtain the stuff and ship it in. The reason I love this gift is that it was so thoughtful and took some serious advance planning, too. The first thing I wanted to do with this was make black pasta. I love pasta and I love clams so that was the original plan but I think the final dish was even better and certainly more exotic.

So the first step was to clean and parboil the octopus. I will skip those particular photos since they are not likely to incite you to run out and try this dish. Let’s face it – raw octopus is ugly looking and not particularly appetizing. Anyway, I parboiled it for about 5 minutes (it was 1kg and please don’t ask me to convert that to pounds – I have to think like a Canadian now). I pulled it out, rinsed it an sliced it up. Then I simply marinated it for about an hour and a half in olive oil, lemon juice, white wine, a little anchovy paste, garlic and some herbs de provence.

Next step was to make the pasta. I made a standard semolina and flour pasta using 1 cup each fine ground white semolina and all purpose flour, one large egg, a tblsp of olive oil, and some cold water. Making a well in the center of the flour, I mixed the liquid ingredients with abut a TBSP of squid ink and a tsp of sea salt.

The flavor of squid ink is very delicate – it’s not at all fishy and just gives the pasta a hint of sea tang in flavor and aroma. Oh and it looks way cool. I then rolled out the pasta to a number 6 thickness on my trusty atlas pasta roller and cut it into fettuccini.

For the prawns, I simply cleaned them and added them whole to the octopus in marinade for about 10 minutes before cooking. I cooked the prawns first in a hot skillet to give them a nice crust and removed them from the pan before they were quite done. Next add the octopus and enough of the marinade to make a sauce to the hot skillet. Cook over low to medium heat so that the marinade just simmers. Cook for about 20 minutes or until octopus is nice and tender – of course you have to keep tasting to tell when that is – or at least I did…OK, OK, I was hungry by then.

When the octopus is just about ready, drop the pasta into the boiling water – you did put a large pot of salted water on to boil, right? And add the shrimp back to the skillet. At this point, my sauce wasn’t thickening the way I wanted so I added a slurry of potato flour and white wine to the mix. You could also add cream if you were so inclined.

When the pasta is done (and this really only takes a few minutes – watch it closely so you don’t overcook) drain the pasta and toss it in the skillet with the seafood and sauce. I serve it in a bowl with a little cracked pepper atop – you can also add some drained capers. Serve with a crusty slab of bread to soak up all that extra sauce. Never, never add grated cheese to this dish though or the ghost of my Nonna will hunt you down. Italians never add cheese to delicate seafood dishes like this because you will simply mask its flavors.

So our New Year’s feast was only 3 kinds of fish, if you count the squid ink, but we enjoyed it thoroughly. Octopus may be something you aren’t quite ready to make at home yet but you could make this dish with almost any kind of seafood or shellfish. I had a request to add mussels but the idea of a completely black dish of food was just too noir for my sensibilities.

I still have 2 packages of squid ink left that I will dream up some new ideas for. In the meantime, I am going to be focusing on cooking and writing about cancer treatment-friendly foods that also taste good. You didn’t think I was going to let a few naughty invasive squamous cells keep me from my passion, now did you?