cook: calamari piccata

I've been wanting to clear my freezer out, and though I'd intended to cook the calamari into burritos, that didn't happen. When I was in college and a young married, I used to always purchase calamari steaks in the seafood section of the little grocery store I shopped in Davis, California to re-create my favorite restaurant order of amandine in my own kitchen. I remember lots of butter, lemon and slivered almonds and how routine it was in my cooking rotation. Thirty years later, I was utterly flummoxed on how to deal with this frozen calamari, and so I kept watching one particular YouTube. However, it was tubes and not steaks inside the package. No matter I thought as I slit them open and then pounded them into a thin steak. No egg wash needed according to the YouTube, just bread crumbs. I had some leftover pork chop seasoning from a box, a canister of panko, which I combined with salt and pepper, Old Bay, and a little flour. I had the chopped parsley, chopped capers, lemon juice and zest, butter, chopped garlic, chopped ramps, leftover cooked and chopped rapini, and wine at the ready.  

I made the butter sauce first by sautéing the garlic and then adding the wine and lemon juice and zest and capers as the garlic started to get golden, and then the chunks of butter. And then the parsley and the ramps. On to the calamari...

Oh my gawd, the calamari curled back up and I couldn't get it flat again and so I went with it.

Not the most elegant looking dish though the rice pilaf and the charred lemons looked picture-worthy. More importantly, it was delicious.

For lunch this week, I've been eating leftovers and vegetarian sandwiches.    

And oh, it's Filipino Food Month and I've been wanting to make pancit palabok or pancit lug lug as pictured from Instagram.

You can't see the soy bean threads underneath that mound of ground pork rinds and fried garlic, but it's an ingredient I'd need to get to cook this dish.