Last year we were making giant sheets of fried cuttlefish. Our goal was to make a sheet which was crispy and decadent on the outside and sweet and tender on the inside, screaming of the sea.
Since then, I have been wanting to take the fried cuttlefish or squid to another level. I wanted to make squid in its own ink, in the manner of our fried cuttlefish sheets. We started work on this project in October and something went amiss. We turned the result into grains of squid, an interesting and tasty adaptation of a failed attempt.
Since then I had planned on revisiting the idea and this week we had the opportunity to play with cephalopods and their ink again.
We found some giant calamari at a local market and we also happened to have squid ink in the pantry which we had purchased from Despana. We blended the squid and the ink in the food processor and seasoned it with salt and cayenne. With the addition of Activa, we bound the puree and then rolled it into sheets. It rested for a night in the refrigerator and then we poached it at 55 degrees Celsius for forty-five minutes. Once we were done we finally had beautiful black squid sheets.
