This stuffed calamari recipe is simple and incredibly good. Quite unusually, compared to traditional fish recipes, we add cheese which confers creaminess.
I added the technique for cleaning calamari, but you can usually find them already cleaned at the fish vendor’s, so you just need to separate the tentacles from the mantle.
Calamari are very easy to cook, and the main thing to remember is that the squid flesh is kept tender by a short cooking time. It can be prepared and kept in the fridge in advance and cooked at the very last moment.
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cooking Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Yield: Makes 4 servings.
Ingredients
- 4 calamari
- 40 g breadcrumbs
- 1 egg
- 3 tbsps. grated Pecorino or Caciocavallo cheese
- 2 small garlic cloves, deprived of the green germ
- Parsley
- 3 tbsps. olive oil
- Salt
- Pepper
- 2 tbsps. dry white wine
Instructions
Hold the tentacles and detach the from the body pulling delicately: the guts will follow too. Remove the thin transparent bone from inside the body. Rinse inside and out, discarding the skin. Also discard the eyes, the guts, the beak at the centre of the tentacles, and all the cartilaginous parts.
Cut up the tentacles and sauté them in a non-stick frying pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil, season with salt and a bit of freshly milled black pepper. Put them in a bowl and add the other ingredients with the parsley and garlic chopped together. Mix and stuff the calamari. Close each calamaro with a toothpick.
Pour the rest of the olive oil in the pan previously used to cook the tentacles, and sauté the calamari. When they are lightly browned, pour in the wine and finish cooking for 15-20 minutes. Add some water if the liquid dries up. Check with a fork; if they are tender, they are ready.