My hubby and I adore eating seafood and love cooking up special dishes enjoy together. When we created this dish the first time we were light on with the vodka in the stuffing and served it with Pear Ketchup to tempt our kids. They loved the Calamari and ate that dipped into Ketchup, but the stuffing didn’t appeal to their little taste buds. We came to the conclusion that this is for the more mature tastes and decided that we had to make it again with adults in mind, and of course with a lovely Vodka glaze (hee hee). We tested it out on my parents and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. Nice to have an elegant dish suitable to be served at a dinner party and who would know that it was suitable for the failsafe diet!
These would be great as an entrée or as a main meal with side dishes.
150g cashews
Small handful of parsley
2 cloves garlic
1 celery stalk
2 shallots
4 slices bread (crusts work best)
200g finely diced choko
1 egg
80g Vodka
1/2 teaspoon citric acid
Salt to taste
6 small squid tubes, or 4 large, cleaned
1 ltr Water
Chop cashews on speed 6 for 2 seconds. set aside.
Add parsley, garlic, celery, and shallots. Chop speed 6 for 2 seconds.
Add slices of bread chop speed 6 for 4 seconds.
Add remaining ingredients with the cashews. Mix on speed 3 for 10 seconds on reverse.
Pat squid tubes with paper towel to remove excess moisture. Seal the small end with a toothpick. Use a spoon to fill the tubes with the breadcrumb mixture. Don’t overfill, the stuffing will expand slightly during cooking. Seal the other end with a toothpick.
Fill the Thermomix bowl with 1 ltr water. Place tubes in the Varoma bowl and put it on top of the Thermomix. Cook for 40 minutes at Varoma Temperature speed 2.
Glaze (optional):
1 shallot, sliced finely
2 tsp minced garlic
2 tbsp water
1 tbsp rice malt syrup
2 tbsp pear syrup (from tinned pears)
2 tbsp vodka
When calamari has approx 10 minutes left, mix all ingredients together in a small saucepan. Simmer gently to reduce and thicken. Serve poured over the cooked Stuffed Calamari, garnish with fresh sliced shallots and serve.
Notes:
Left over stuffing is great to use for roasting a whole Chook.
The choko’s in the stuffing could be added with the garlic and celery if you wanted to chop them in the Thermomix, personally I liked the added texture of them finely diced.
Calamari tubes can be stuffed in advanced and kept in the fridge for a few hours until ready to cook. Best served immediately after cooking.
There is also another stuffing recipe on my Vanilla Salted Chicken in the Varoma recipe.
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