Ingredients

Feeds four people. Giving 6 to 7 baby squid per person.

• 1 kg cleaned frozen baby squid
• 10 cloves of garlic
• 6 red finger chillies
• 150ml extra virgin olive oil
• 1 bunch flat leaf parsley
• 2-3 lemons, juiced
• rock salt.

Special Equipment

Two cast iron skillets or a heavy duty frying pan with a metal handle.

To Prepare

• Defrost the baby squid in a bowl of cold water, drain and pull the tentacles out (frozen baby squid come with their tentacles inside the body).
• Pat the squid and tentacles dry with kitchen paper and pop them in the fridge until you’re ready to cook.
• Peel and roughly chop up the garlic.
• Cut the whole chillies lengthways into quarters, including the seeds and roughly chop.
• Place the garlic, chilli and olive oil in a small, heavy-bottomed pan. Cook very gently for 10 minutes on the lowest heat available on your stove until the garlic and chilli are soft. Do not deep fry.
• Wash, spin and roughly chop the parsley including the stalks.

To Cook

• Heat the wood fired oven to 350C with a strong, licking flame.
• If you have a shelf/trivet use it for this dish as it gets the food closer to the fire. You could use heat proof bricks as an alternative shelf.
• Place the skillets or frying pan into your oven and leave for at least ten minutes, to make them searingly hot.
• Warning: Do not touch the skillets without oven gloves or a thick oven cloth! Warn your friends and family too…
• Toss the squid in a table spoon of olive oil.
• Take your skillets/frying pan from the oven and while still searingly hot, tip on the squid with a dramatic sizzle.
• Place them straight back into the oven and cook for approximately one to two minutes
• Bring back out of the oven and transfer the squid to a serving bowl. Pour the lemon juice over straight away to both tenderise and flavour the squid. Add the parsley, chilli and garlic in oil and the salt and serve.

And there you have Wood Fired Baby Squid with Chilli and Garlic. One of our favourites and we hope you’ll enjoy it too. For more Blistering Recipes, take a look at the website recipe page. Enjoy!