Greetings and salutations! 

I have experimenting in the kitchen again, and for once, it's not to make a dessert!

Calamari is one of the few types of seafood that I can eat. I developed an allergy to shellfish when I was a child, much to my chagrin. Yet it's a foodstuff that I don't have much experience cooking. This recipe would only be my second time using the whole calamari, rather than the precooked breaded variety. 

My first attempt had been an Italian stuffed calamari recipe. Which was super good but took me three times as long to make as it should have. So for my second try, I decided to go for something a little, a lot simpler. And in my search on Pinterest, I came across a recipe for a spicy Chinese-style stir fry which sounded right up my alley. 

Original recipe that I adapted from: https://omnivorescookbook.com/spicy-squid-stir-fry/. 

The only trouble was....I didn't have half of the ingredients. Chinese cuisine is usually something I buy, not something I cook, lol. My family is also not much into spicy stuff anyway.

So, I improvised with the ingredients I had, made some substitutions and the results came out absolutely amazing! 

The only thing that didn't really work was...how I cut the calamari. The original recipe had said to split and score them and that they would curl up. Mine didn't do that, and those tubes were kinda big to get the mouth around. And nothing is worse than trying to chew a slightly rubbery squid tube that's too big for the mouth. So I highly recommend cutting the tubes into pieces for easier eating. 

Sweet Squid Stir Fry Recipe: 

Serves 4.

Ingredients:

3 10.6 oz packages of frozen PenaPesca calamari tubes and tentacles, thawed.

Cooking sherry 

2-3 bell peppers, chopped

1 white onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

Sauce:

1/3 cup water

1/6 cup Kikoman Sweet Soy Sauce

2 tsp sesame seeds

1- 1 1/2 tsp cumin

1- 1 1/2 tsp ginger powder

2 tsp corn starch

Directions:

1. Chop calamari tubes into wide rings or strips. Marinate tube pieces and tentacles in cooking sherry and set aside. 

2. Caramelize bell pepper and onion pieces over medium heat. Add minced garlic towards end. 

3. Combine sauce ingredients into bowl. Stir occasionally to keep contents from settling. 

4. Remove calamari from the marinade. Saute calamari on high for a few minutes, drain as needed. 

5. Combine veggies, calamari and sauce, cook on medium for a few minutes to thicken the sauce. 

6. Remove from heat and serve immediately with white rice.