Squid Illustration

Chilli Salt and Pepper Squid

If you love calamari and care about sustainable seafood, get yourself to a fishmonger for some squid. A gorgeous pile of fresh squid, white meaty flesh tinged with pinky-purple notes, glistening and eyes bright, is a sight to behold. Get the squid cleaned and gutted by your monger and make sure to get both the body and tentacles, both of which are delicious. 

This is one of my favourite squid dishes, crisp fried squid is one of those great beer snacks and I wish every bar sold it. perfect it. It’s worth doing and is such a wonderful thing to eat as a starter or a snack or part a great table full of food.

You will need - Serves 2

400g whole squid, cleaned

A handful of rice or gluten free flour

1 tbsp of coarse salt 

1 tbsp of ground white peppercorns roughly ground

1 tbsp black peppercorns roughly ground

1 tbsp roughly ground scezhuan peppercorns

1 tbsp of pink peppercorns crushed 

handful of chopped coriander

1 red chilli finely sliced

1 lime for squeezing

To make

Simply dip the squid in water then into the flour and massage in until you have a rough uneven coating. Heat your fryer to 170 then fry the squid until crisp, this takes only a few minutes.   Toss the squid in the salt and peppercorns as soon as it comes out of the fryer. Drizzle with a good serving of good olive oil. Serve sprinkled with coriander and chilli and a good squeeze of lime juice.