I am refreshing a lot of my old recipes and this one popped up. My recent order of seafood from Sizzlefish (affiliate link) had the most beautiful calamari in it so I thought this might be a good dinner to make this weekend. The only substitute I will be making is frozen tomatoes; I don’t have fresh ones right now but I know it won’t make much difference. For this calamari recipe the tomatoes aren’t the stars.

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Calamari Recipe: Calamari and Quick Tomato Sauce on Rice

Serves 2

For the Calamari:

4 squid, cleaned and cut into rings, with tentacles if desired
1 tsp olive oil
1 meyer lemon, juiced or juice from half of a regular lemon
2 1/2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 TBSP fresh parsley, chopped
1 TBSP sherry
1/2 tsp salt

For the Tomato Sauce:

1 TBS olive oil
2 1/2 cloves garlic, pressed
4 large plum tomatoes, trimmed and roughly chopped
2 TBSP roughly cut fresh basil
1 TBSP fresh oregano, minced
1 tsp salt

2 cups cooked rice

Make the Tomato Sauce:

add the olive oil to a large saute pan over medium high heat
When it is hot add the garlic.
Add the tomatoes and when they come to a boil reduce the heat to low.
Then add the salt, basil and oregano and let it all simmer while you prepare the calamari.

Clean and prepare the squid; be sure you get out all of the spine.
When you are done you will have the four body pieces and four sets of tentacles

homegrown meyer lemon — I grew this little lemon on my **meyer lemon tree**

Juice your lemon
Cut the calamari into rings.

Heat a small fry pan over medium heat. Add the olive oil.
When it is hot add the garlic then the sherry, lemon juice and salt.
Add the cut up calamari and watch it closely it will cook very quickly.
Add the parsley at the last minute.. The idea is not to have a lot of sauce here but rather to flavor the squid.
Remove from the heat and set aside to plate the meal.

To plate - put half of the tomato sauce on the bottom of a bowl. Add one cup of rice and then add half of the cooked calamari and sauce.

How Was the Calamari Recipe?

I am not a big fan of the tentacles so I served mine without them. The husband loves them so we are a lucky pair when it comes to calamari aren’t we? It was a delicious meal; the calamari was nice and tender and the garlic in both the tomato sauce and lemon wine sauce brought them together nicely. The rice was a lovely change from pasta. We both enjoyed this meal very much.