Salt and Pepper Calamari

I'm going a little bit healthy with todays post! I've actually been trying to eat healthier lately. I just got back to work a couple of weeks ago because school holidays are over and I felt like I'd been eating too much of the good stuff over my break. So here we are. I promise I'm not going to fill the blog with healthy food - I love my baking too much for that, it's just that every now and then I might add a healthy recipe that I try out. Although this Salt & Pepper Calamari recipe I found goes to show that eating healthy doesn't necessarily mean eating boring food.

This recipe was surprisingly easy. To be honest I've always been very nervous about cooking seafood for some reason. I've heard that it's very easy to overcook, but I'm also afraid that I'll under cook it in my trying not to overcook it! I've tried to cook calamari a couple of times before, but I've never known what to put on it. When I saw this recipe in the Nigella Lawson cookbook 'Nigella Bites' I knew I had to try it. 

I started off by cutting my calamari tubes in half so I could get to the inside. I cleaned out what I needed from the inside of the tubes, although luckily there wasn't much left there. Once I'd done that I sliced each half into rectangular shaped pieces.

Then in a zip lock bag I added the corn flour and ground up salt and pepper which I shook up to combine. I then added the calamari and shook the bag again until the calamari was coated in the flour mixture. 

I added the calamari, in a couple of batches, to a hot frying pan with plenty of oil in it to cook. I only needed to cook the calamari for about 2 minutes on each side before it was ready.

Before I served the calamari I added it to a plate with some paper towel on it to absorb some of the oil. The calamari had crisped up very nicely - it was golden brown, and crunchy because of the corn flour mixture. Then I added it to the plate with a little salad I'd made up. And voila! A very quick, easy, light and healthy meal. Perfect for a hot summers night dinner.

Recipe Source:

'Nigella Bites' by Nigella Lawson