Curried and smoked calamari w/ chili-lime pickle mayo

I almost never cook the same thing the same way twice. While I learned early on that it's important to take good notes when brewing, I never got into the habit of doing the same when I cook. Almost all of my most successful meals are lost to history. This is at least one of my motives for starting this blog.

A couple of weeks ago, I was smoking my first homemade bacon and trying to decide how to cook the squid I had defrosted for lunch. At a loss for an interesting idea, I decided to try smoking it. I took some curry powder and Murray River salt and lightly seasoned the cross-hatched pieces of calamari I bought at Trader Joes. I placed them in a saute pan and set the pan over the hickory smoke next to the bacon on the grill. They cooked slowly for about 15 minutes until the smallest pieces just started to get tough. The result was fantastic! The smoke was subtle, clean and unobtrusive. The texture was tender with just a little bite. I've always followed the "under two minutes or over two hours" rule to cooking squid so I truly expected this to fail.



It went well with this mayonnaise I made a couple of days earlier.

Using standard mayo making procedure, combine:

1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup canola oil
1 egg yolk
Juice of 1 lime
1 piece of lime pickle, minced (Asian store)
1 heaping Tbsp chili pickle (Asian store)
and salt to taste


I love when something that I think will flop works so well.