Tapas Style Char-Grilled Squid

Recipe by CSF Member Beth Gregg!

Recipe by CSF Member Beth Gregg! In an effort to recreate the grilled squid from Café Ba-Ba-Reeba, the Chicago Tapas Restaurant, I adapted this recipe from Epicurious and made it with my San Francisco middle-schoolers, and they LOVED it.  They are asking me to get squid from Sea Forager *whenever* it is available. 

Cleaning:

It is imperative to diligently and aggressively clean the squid before marinating or cooking them.  Any residual guts in the bodies or poop tubes left in the tentacles (which look like a tentacle), takes away from the clean, light, pristine flesh and flavor of the squid.  Follow the seaforager video on this, but be super diligent: 

Ingredients:

Marinade

·       1-11/2 lb. cleaned squid—bodies scored three times per side

·       ¼ cup dry sherry

·       ¼ cup olive oil

·       Juice of one lemon

·       6 garlic cloves, smashed

·       ¾ teaspoon red pepper flakes

·       1 teaspoon smoked paprika

·       ½ teaspoon salt

Garnish/Salad

·       6 Yukon gold potatoes

·       ¾ cup parsley leaves, cleaned and stems picked off

·       Lemon juice

·       Olive oil

Method:

1.     Whisk marinade ingredients together.  Add squid.  Cover and refrigerate for several hours or even overnight.

2.     Remove squid from marinade and thread the bodies onto skewers—I can fit three per skewer.  Put all the tentacles on other skewers.

3.     Cut potatoes into cubes and boil in salted water until soft.  Drain and mix with parsley leaves and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with lemon juice.

4.     Prepare your grill and grill the squid until cooked through, charred on bodies and until tentacles are crispy.

5.     To serve, arrange squid on serving dish next to potatoes and parsley, squeeze lemon juice over hot squid and serve with additional lemon slices on the side.