Fried Stuffed Squid

Greg:

Some of you may recall that we attended a cooking school in Chiang Mai in Thailand. It's a popular activity that is well established in that city. In Hoi An, Vietnam, cooking schools abound, but they are really just an additional service offered by many of the restaurants. We chose to attend cooking school at one of our favourite restaurants in Hoi An, Cafe 43.

"Fresh Beer" or Bia Hoi is a cheap draught beer that is dispensed using a simple hand pump. For those brewers out there, this means that rather than using co2 to push out the beverage, air fills the headspace and oxidation ensures. Needless to say, the beer must be fresh for it to be any good. At 3000 dong ($1=20,000 dong) it is an outstanding deal.

But I digress. At cooking school, Cynthia, Max and I chose three dishes: Fried Stuffed Squid, Fresh Salad Rolls with Shrimp, and Chicken with Chili and Lemon Grass. Mmmm.

Here's how to make Fried Stuffed Squid.

Ingredients

• 1 squid
• 1/2 carrot, peeled, julienned and diced
• 1/2 white onion, thinly sliced and diced
• 1 bunch of spring onion
• 100 gm minced pork
• 1 tsp garlic, chopped and crushed in mortar and pestil
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp sugar

Steps

1. Mix pork, garlic, pepper, salt and sugar in a bowl.
2. Using 2 Tbl veg oil in hot pan, add pork mixture. Cook for a minute with high heat.
3. Add onion, carrot and stir constantly until meat is cooked and onion is carmelized.
4. Add green onion and sauté for 3 min.

Now the fun part. Stuff the mixture into the squid. Pack it down! And use toothpicks to close the end.

Hold on tight, squid is extremely slippery!

Using 2 Tbl veg oil in a hot pan, add squid and cook over medium heat until nice and golden brown on all sides.

Serve on a bed of lettuce. Before serving, make perpendicular cuts into squid using scissors.

Dipping sauce (not optional): mix together 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper and juice of two small limes.

Delicious!



Now, once we return to Winnipeg, the tough part will be finding good squid.

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