If you’re looking for a quick, easy seafood recipe for pasta here’s how to make Calamari & Pomodirini.  You’ll need good linguine pasta, access to fresh squid and optionally a good wine to pair.   Prices listed are based in Dublin, Ireland.  This makes plenty for two people, let’s get started! (takes 15-20min).

What You’ll Need

• 600 grams of fresh squid (cleaned, cut into rings) 6€
• 500 grams of linguine pasta 2€
• Fresh cherry tomatoes, chili flakes, parsley, garlic, sea salt, an onion 2€
• Glass of white cooking wine (cheap pinot grigio is ok)
• Optional: Good white wine to pair
  • Recommended: Falanghina (Greco)

Heat Things Up

Start with heating a thick pan with garlic, chili flakes and olive oil on a low temperature, then you’ll move onto other parallel tasks.  Pan below is a battle-scarred shogun that used to belong to my Grandmother, it’s clean don’t worry.

Tomatoes and Fixin’s

Slice up your cherry tomatoes, add parsley and a dash of garlic, olive oil and salt, mix well.  This also makes for a good brushcetta in the meantime if you’re starving.  Let this marinate a bit and move to your squid.

Mix up your Squid

Take your cleaned squid, cut in rings and mix it into a container with olive oil, garlic, parsley.  Sprinkle a few douses of white wine in the mix.  Toss in some chili flakes (I like it spicy, adjust as needed) and a pinch of salt and pepper.  Let it marinate and stir well.

Cook the Squid

Squid cooks very fast.  It’s very important to only cook it for a few minutes, overcooked squid is more like a tire than an edible food.  You should have your pan ready and simmering, carefully place your marinated squid and cook on high (4-5 on our stove)  for 2-3minutes.

You’ll want to test the texture as it cooks quickly, note below between uncooked (LEFT) and cooked (RIGHT).  When it’s cooked the texture should not be gel-like, and should turn white.

Simmer Down Now

Once the texture of the squid changes and is white (taste small pieces to test) it’s time to bring it all together.  Change the temperature to a low simmer (2 on our stove) and add the tomatoes and a healthy amount of parsley.  Simmer at low heat.

Make Your Pasta

We use Garofalo Linguine from Napoli, but any decent pasta will work.  Cook as you normally would, for us it’s a boil at 11 minutes with a dash of olive oil and pinch of sea salt to raise the boiling temperature.  Mix your squid while pasta is cooking.

Combine and Serve

Once your pasta is done it’s time to bring it all together.  We find it’s easier to empty the squid and tomatoes into the pasta and mix before serving, ladling the remnants on top and serving.  Here we’re pairing with a 2011 Czech Palava bile polosuche I had lying around.