{"id":12400,"date":"2017-04-06T06:09:33","date_gmt":"2017-04-06T06:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=12400"},"modified":"2017-04-06T06:09:33","modified_gmt":"2017-04-06T06:09:33","slug":"roasted-squid-oregano-chilis-habanada-fennel-spinach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/?p=12400","title":{"rendered":"roasted squid, oregano, chilis, habanada, fennel; spinach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12401\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/squid_spinach.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m probably never going to understand why squid are not way\u00a0up at the top of the scale when it comes to popularity, for their taste alone. When cooked with some sensitivity, they are one of the most delicious seafood forms around, and they really need very little embellishment. They&#8217;re also completely sustainable, and I think they&#8217;re available all over the world, anywhere\u00a0people might be settled near an\u00a0ocean.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re also apparently very intelligent, but I&#8217;m not sure where that fits into this discussion, especially since the only foods we consume that weren&#8217;t once a part of a living thing are\u00a0salt and water.<\/p>\n<p>Squid are\u00a0definitely among the least expensive delicacies\u00a0in a fish\u00a0market, which I suppose might only represent their abundance, and not the disdain of the consumer, but I still wonder about their\u00a0modest popularity index.<\/p>\n<p>This particular batch, together with\u00a0the success I had in cooking them, may have been my best experience with this cephalopod, ever.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose the image below, showing how I arranged a pound of\u00a0squid on a plate after having dried them thoroughly, just before I placed them in 2 oven pans, might say something about how I feel about these creatures.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12402\" src=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/squid_waiting.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The spinach, which had somehow been\u00a0overwintered in the middle of New Jersey, even without the &#8216;high cave&#8217; protection which has ensured so many loyal Greenmarket\u00a0<span class=\"s1\">habitu\u00e9s\u00a0<\/span>a supply of green vegetables since the end of the so-called &#8216;growing season&#8217;, was impossibly\u00a0sweet.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>two large rectangular enameled cast iron pans heated on top of the stove until quite hot, their cooking surfaces then brushed with olive oil, and once\u00a0the oil\u00a0was also quite hot, one pound of rinsed and carefully dried squid from Blue Moon Seafood in the Union Square Greenmarket, mostly bodies but\u00a0a few tentacles, divided between the two in being quickly arranged inside the pans, immediately\u00a0sprinkled with some super-pungent\u00a0dried Sicilian\u00a0oregano from Buon Italia, part of one\u00a0dried Sicilian pepperoncino, also from Buon Italia, and an entire section of a home-dried heatless, orange\/gold <a href=\"http:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/2017\/02\/28\/the-habanada-pepper-fresh-and-dried-two-ways\/\">Habanada pepper<\/a> (purchased fresh from Norwich Meadows Farm last fall), some sea salt and freshly-ground Tellicherry pepper, followed by a drizzle of\u00a0a few tablespoons of\u00a0juice from a\u00a0local lemon from Fantastic Gardens of Long Island, and some olive oil, the pan placed inside a pre-heated 400\u00ba oven and roasted for 5\u00a0minutes, removed, the squid distributed onto 2 plates, ladled with a bit of their cooking juices, after they had been transferred to a\u00a0sauce pitcher, scattered with a little micro bronze fennel from Two Guys from Woodbridge, and served with halves\u00a0of another, tiny local lemon-lime served on the side of each plate<\/li>\n<li>a generous amount of\u00a0very sweet overwintered (I was told not in a\u00a0&#8216;high\u00a0cave&#8217;) spinach from Lani&#8217;s Farm,\u00a0washed in several changes of water, drained, very gently wilted (that is, not reduced too far) inside a large enameled cast iron pot in a little olive oil in which one 2\u00a0cloves of garlic from John D. Madura Farm, quartered, had first been allowed to sweat, then seasoned with salt, freshly-ground Tellicherry\u00a0pepper,\u00a0a little of the\u00a0dried Sicilian\u00a0pepperoncino, drizzled with olive oil and a little sweet local lemon juice from Fantastic Gardens of Long Island<\/li>\n<li>the wine was an Italian (Campania) white,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.chelseawinevault.com\/cantina-di-lisandro-alabranno-fiano-2015#.WOWrLkgpCaM\">Cantina di Lisandro Alabranno Fiano 2015<\/a>, from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chelseawinevault.com\/\">Chelsea Wine Vault<\/a><\/li>\n<li>the music was\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.arkivmusic.com\/classical\/album.jsp?album_id=15843\">Louis-Nicolas Cl\u00e9rambault&#8217;s 1706\u00a0<em>pastorale<\/em>, &#8216;Le Triomphe D&#8217;iris&#8217;, performed by\u00a0Herv\u00e9 Niquet conducting Le Concert Spirituel <\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m probably never going to understand why squid are not way\u00a0up at the top of the scale when it comes to popularity, for their taste alone. When cooked with some sensitivity, they are one of the most delicious seafood forms around, and they really need very little embellishment. They&#8217;re also completely sustainable, and I think &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meals-at-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/food.hoggardwagner.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}