This dish can also be made with common squids, but the cost will be superior.
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 3€ pp)
- Salt
- 200 g already cooked chickpeas (attention: DO NOT USE canned ones)
- 16 already roasted cherry tomatoes
- 2 small onions confit
- 500 g flying squids, cut in pieces
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/2 teaspoon paprika
- EV olive oil
- Fresh sprouts
- Lemon zest
This dish can be ridiculously easy, if we have already prepared in our fridge all the ingredients, except the mollusks.
I make it clear:
a) Even if, at restaurant, it is forbidden to serve frozen chickpeas, as the ice turns them dry and not pleasant, at home it is something acceptable. So, especially the workers who have no time to prepare home meals on week days, they must always have in the fridge already boiled chickpeas and beans.
I briefly tell you that the chickpeas must be very tender but also well shaped. So, NO SODA, NO EXTREME TEMPERATURES, but just plenty time of gentle boiling in salted water.
b) Every time we turn our oven on, we must also put inside a smaller baking sheet with tomatoes or cherry tomatoes, tossed in light oil. This very simple action will give us the ability to prepare à la minute dishes and extraordinary sauces. We can keep the tomatoes in the fridge for up to 3 days.
c) Nothing easier than preparing onions confit. Plenty of neutral oil, very low temperature (max 80o C) and that´s all. We can keep the onions in the fridge for up to 3 days, as well.
Having already prepared and brought to ambient temperature these ingredients, the only thing we have to do is cooking the flying squids. These mollusks look like common squids, but are harder and less tasteful than them. That´s why they are much cheaper. (In Greece they cost about 7 Euros per kg). So, we first boil them till tender in salted and aromatized with bay leaf water.
When the flying squids are cooked, we put them in a hot pan with a mild olive oil for 1-2 minutes. We don´t want the mollusks to get dried, but just to “color” them and produce some Maillard aromas.
We add the chickpeas, the onions and at the end the cherry tomatoes, we sauté them for 1 more minute and finally we incorporate the paprika.
We put a round ring in each plate and we fill them with the food. We decorate with the sprouts and grated lemon zest.
