Curried squid

from The Food of India: A Journey for Food Lovers by Priya Wickramasinghe and Carol Selva Rajah

I was trying new products from our local Woolworths Metro. Squid rings from “Just Caught Frozen Seafood,” and the cold weather seemed like a good opportunity for a curry, and I had just bought the above second hand book.

The Curry Powder was made by separately roasting cumin seeds and coriander seeds, and then ground into a fine powder in the mortar with turmeric and chilli powder.

Squid was then coated in curry powder.

Onions gently fried until lightly brown, add curry leaves (a friend gave me the plant), fenugreek seeds, garlic, ginger and coconut milk and bring to the boil. Add the squid and finish with lime juice and seasoning.

I was underwhelmed by this dish. Perhaps it was because the squid was frozen, however it was super tender, although I would not recommend this product as about half of the squid rings had the exterior membrane which I did not notice until they were cooked, and they are time consuming to remove once the squid is cut into rings.

Interestingly, India Cookbook by Pushpesh Pant (which is like the Silver Spoon for Italy, or 1080 Recipes for Spain), contains no recipe for squid or calamari.

Charmaine Solomon has a recipe for Squid Curry (Gulai cumi-cumi) in The Complete Asian Cookbook, which is similar in that garlic, ginger, chilli powder and coconut milk forms the sauce. However it is different in that there is no curry powder coating of the squid, and uses Kemiri nuts or Brazil nuts, lemon grass, shrimp paste and tamarind liquid. That sounds more interesting.

PS. The leftover squid for lunch the next day had transformed itself. The curry flavours were more forward.