If you have the opportunity of buying some nice squids, try this recipe! It’s simple, but delicious and very elegant too! You could serve it for a posh dinner!
You can also prepare this dish galore, first of all because you never get tired of eating them! Second, because the leftovers can become a delicious pasta sauce the day after!
It’s typical from Venice. The most important thing, is the quality of squids: they must be very good and fresh!
Ingredients:
What you basically need, for 2 people and some leftovers to use on pasta/gnocchi is:
- 1 kg fresh squids
- 100 g tomato puree
- One small white onion (almost 50 g)
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 glass dry white wine
- 1 glass vegetable broth
- 1 tablespoon chopped parsley
- Salt, pepper and olive oil
Properly clean the squids, but keep the ink on a side! Don’t throw it away! You’ll need it (at least one “bag” of ink, I don’t know the proper name of it!).
Cut the squids into stripes, and cut also the tentacles.
Stir fry the chopped onion in olive oil, the unpeeled clove and the parsley. After 3 minutes, take the garlic off and put the squid. Simmer it for a couple of minutes, then put the white wine and salt.
After that, add the tomato puree and the broth.
Melt the ink in some warm water and add it to the squids. In this way the sauce will be smooth. If you put the ink in the sauce the way it is, it will have some grains that won’t be very pleasant under your teeth! This is a small secret to help you prepare the perfect seppie in umido alla veneziana.
Let it slowly cook for 1 hour almost.
It will have a smooth thick dark sauce.
Serve it with some yellow polenta and you’ll be astonished by the taste of this dish! You can use both, the soft or the grilled one. I prefer the soft one, according to my taste, so I can eat it better with the creamy sauce of the squids and ink!
As I told you, the leftovers will be perfect the day after as a sauce for some spaghetti, but al dente 😉 !!
It looks great! How should the consistency of squids be? Just to understand if they’re ready!
Squids will be tender. They shouldn’t be like rubber. That’s why you need to cook them at least one hour. Obviously the quality of squids is very important. Anyway, to keep them soft they must be cooked a very little time or at least one hour. In this case, to obtain the desired taste, the quick option mustn’t be considered.
Let me know something if you try the recipe!!!
Is this the traditional way of cooking?
It’s the typical recipe from Venice. I cooked these squids also on wednesday. Yum :p