Elaine: Braised Stuffed Calamari

After lugging home a luggage full of used cookbooks from my NYC trip to The Strand and Bonnie Slotnicks, I looked up all the stewed stuffed squid recipes I could find. I just picked up The Classic Italian Cookbook by Marcella Hazan from my trip and love this book. Definitely a book to add to your collection. Anyway, 2 lbs of squid seemed a little much for Mike and I. So I halved the recipe and ended up with 8 stuffed tubes of squid. To my stuffing, I finely chopped the tentacles and added garlic, onion, parmesan, breadcrumbs, lemon zest and some jarred roasted red peppers I wanted to finish from the fridge. I sauteed onions, garlic, more roasted red peppers, ripped up the can of tomatoes, white wine, finely diced carrot and celery before adding the raw tightly packaged tubes of squid. I couldn't wait an hour. So I took them out a little earlier. They were so delicious. I served it as an appetizer.

I'm thinking about putting the leftover squid-ees on a grill tomorrow, charr them and serve on top of arugula salad. The next time I make it, I'm going to try adding pancetta into the stuffing. I paired this assignment with some fetuccine with white clam sauce, as Marcella Hazan suggested in her book. A dozen littleneck clams, finely diced red onion, olive oil, garlic, 1 dried red chili peper, white wine, and butter. I threw in thinly sliced discs of lemon at the end. Talk about fast food. That dish took under 10 minutes from the cutting board to my mouth(not including the time it took the pasta water to boil).
For this meal I had all 4 burners going. Mike said he wanted to start a blog for dishwashers. He wanted to take a pic of the dirty pots and pans, my mess of a countertop and everything else I throw into the sink in between. I should really clean as I go like most of you do.
Jer, thanks for choosing this recipe. Next time when Mike's not in the kitchen I'll try and sneak in some anchovies.