This is how we did it at the restaurant. It was a staple for 16 years and now I’m showing you how to do it.
THE GRILL
Today: Mesquite
For milder flavor: Cherry & Oak
Other options: Hardwood Charcoal
STEP 1 | Marinate the Calamari
• Buttermilk
• House seasoning (or salt and pepper)
| Soak calamari in buttermilk mixed with house seasoning for 1 day. Wash and remove purple skin if desired.
Recommended Recipes:
Pesto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7CahCLtvSE
Pomodoro Sauce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKFeRl2CKWc
Skordalia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5LMg_0qmNs
STEP 2 | Sautéed Greens
• Olive oil
• Romaine lettuce
• Spinach or other salad greens (escarole, butter lettuce, etc.)
• Spanish onions (or red onions/shallots)
• Garlic (chopped)
• Kosher salt
STEP 3 | Prep Calamari for Grilling
• Olive oil
• House seasoning (or salt and pepper)
• 6 tubes
• 4-5 tentacles
| Oil and season a pan, add your seafood and set aside.
STEP 4 | Plate Assembly Base
• Pomodoro sauce
• Sautéed greens
• Pesto
STEP 5 | Grill the Calamari
| Grill calamari on hot grill until tender, about 10-15 seconds for tubes, longer for tentacles. Remove from heat and drain excess oil.
STEP 6 | Final Plating
• Skordalia
• Pesto
| Arrange grilled calamari over sautéed greens on plates. Top with a dollop of skordalia.
STEP 7
| Serve immediately.
Fried Calamari: https://youtu.be/xAoZ_S0nLxo
this is Medusa grilled calamari that was on the menu for 16 years I can see why it was so popular I made the same calamari as I did for the fried calamari I washed it took the purple skin off soaked it in buttermilk and a little bit of my house seasoning you can use salt and pepper and let that go a day I’ve got some pesto we’ve done a show on that I made some Pomodoro sauce here basically you know sauteed uh onion garlic olive oil little bit of fennel salt and San Marzano tomato brought that to a simmer turned it off right away pureed it one of the things components on this grilled calamari that everybody loved was the sauteed greens and everybody always ask how you make them so today we’re gonna make the greens from scratch it’s really simple uh this has been washed so it’s still got a little bit of water and that’s important because we need that water to help us steam here just like at the restaurant I fired up my grill today I’m using Mesquite at the restaurant I started with Mesquite the first year it seemed to be a little bit too strong for everybody so I went to cherry and oak but I really like the Mesquite it’s a great flavor but you can use any wood you want you can use hardwood charcoal if you want basically I get my hardwood or my my wood that I’m using today it’s Mesquite and I put my chimney on top of it with the charcoal and I light my newspaper I don’t use any um fuel no lighter fluid um because it just lingers and it gets into the food and I don’t like it so if you can try not to use the briquettes cause some most of the time those are compressed with the kerosene so they will light uh and I just I like to light the fire naturally so I’m gonna start making the greens first because this is really a quick dish and we want to get this hot and what we used to do is we’d add some olive oil we’d put the romaine and the spinach on top of that so I would say there’s roughly about 6 to 8 ounces here of the outside leaves now to this we used to use red onions or Spanish onion or shallots today I found some really nice Vidalia onions and some chopped garlic it doesn’t need to be minced you can hear that sizzling away that’s what we want to hear and then just a little kosher salt that’s the recipe for the greens olive oil romaine spinach you can use escarole you could use any salad greens butter lettuce any older lettuce outside leaves that are still good to eat but they don’t look very good to serve into a salad saute them and it happens very quickly it’s a great bed to put your entrees on it’s a great you know bed to put for a vegetarian you know put a plate of these greens and then build the vegetarian platter from there and this is how far we would take them we take it to here at the restaurant now I’ve got an oiled towel here and oil a little bit more cause whenever you’re doing seafood or anything really you don’t want this on your calamari if you’re uncomfortable doing it with your hand you know you can use the tongs now the thing about using a wood is it burns very hot it burns for a long time so a little bit goes a long way okay I got a little bit more here than I needed but I’m just used to building big pits because I would stand in front of one of these five nights a week for about four and a half hours shoots off about 11 12 degrees that’s why I wear a headband and it’s usually wet so we’re gonna prepare the calamari just like we did at the restaurant everything you know just like we did at the restaurant that’s why we’re putting this cookbook together so people can start doing this at home we would have a pan we put a little bit of my house seasoning in it we’d have these tubes and tentacles already separated two four six we would do on the tubes and we’d try to get at least four or five tentacles and we get this in the oil and this is blazing hot so I’m going to wait and set up my plates first so Pomodoro sauce we did the onion garlic fennel and we put that on there just like a pizza we put the tomato sauce down then see how much liquids coming out of that escarole and we really don’t want that s the escarole would go right on top of the Pomodoro sauce this was a dish uh for a good a good friend of mine Andre Lorenz he would come in he was my boss when I was a chef in Arizona at the Los Ventanas Canyon I was the opening chef for the the restaurant that was open 24 hours anyways he uh well respected a a a gourmand anyways he came into the restaurant one night and he asked if I could do some grilled calamari and I was like yeah I can do that and this is what I made them and I sent it out and it ended up being a staple on our menu for 16 years okay so now that we’ve got our plates set up because this is gonna go quick you don’t want to cook the calamari for too long because the longer you cook it the tougher it’s gonna get it’s one of those it’s like the fried calamari it’s it’s all a minute you know you need you may need a longer tongs what I’ve got here is I don’t have any coals here so I can work with it I mean we’re looking at that was what 10 15 seconds the tentacles take a little bit longer you wait till they open up and then you turn them down like that pour the juice out I mean that’s a 1/32 grilled calamari that’s when they’re tender that’s when they’re delicious we marinated it in the buttermilk that helped break it down as well see now I’m working on the side of the grill so I don’t have to reach over those coals and you wanna get the the tentacles crispy and these went right on top in the middle and I always saved the big one for the top then we take some of my skordalia which is the garlic dip made with almonds and olive oil and fresh lemon juice cayenne pepper and I’d put a little dollop on here because this sauce with any seafood it gets served at Greek funerals you know at Greek funerals they fry fish and they do broiled fish then they have a big pan of greens and rice pilaf and and Greek roasted oven potatoes and a big huge Greek salad and then at the end of the buffet they got these bowls of the skordalia we use skordalia instead of tartar sauce on our fish so you know every time you go to a Greek funeral you can expect to get a garlic dip with your fish so here it is this is Medusa calamari I’m gonna make another one because it’s just so quick and easy 2 four 6 you know um you really don’t wanna do this ahead of time you wanna do it right before you eat you know there were some people that liked it well done and crispy and that’s no big deal you know you eat the way you like to but if you want it tender and delicious we never left it in this marinade for more than uh two days you know you can over marinate and you know we really didn’t have that problem’cause I only marinated what I knew I was gonna need I liked running it out as opposed to having it leftover at the end of the night you know so we got pretty good at guessing how many we were going to go through but yeah we never went more than two days because we were that busy and it was always fresh again I mean look how quick that is I’ve got my longer tongs at the restaurant but I do have a longer pair so please don’t feel sorry for me and yeah the tentacles always take a little bit longer cause you wanna make sure that they’re cooked you know and there’s a a beak in there that you squeeze out these came already clean but if if you have the ability to go to a fish monger and get fresh squid in the tank I know in Chicago there’s plenty of retail seafood stores uh there’s not one here in Lake Geneva but you know you can peel the skin off or not when I told you about the calamari if you leave the skin on it just gives you a more pronounced flavor of squid I like that um that that purple skin leaves a nice flavor of squid so then we put these on top of our escarole and we hit it with the skordalia there’s so much lemon in this you don’t need to serve this with lemon I’m sorry Zach I mean that just cuts right through there a little pesto a little scordy a little tentacle delicious calamari naturally has a little bit of a chew but it’s still tender enough to bite through and the greens and the pesto and then just that little bit of tomato sauce I can see why it was so popular we’ll see you next week thanks for your support I really appreciate it that’s a wrap
1 Comment
This looks absolutely fantastic! Thanks for sharing