It was Valentines Day at the weekend, and as Hand To Mouth got engaged at New Years, I thought I’d better make a bit of an effort. Not being a fan of going to restaurants on VDay (always disappointing) I whipped up a three course feast fit for the future Mrs HTM. The menu:

Salt & Pepper Squid

Baked Cod & Leeks

Lemon Posset with Lemon & Almond Shortbread

I’m going to do a post per course as I don’t have the time to do them all at once, so first up our starter, Salt & Pepper Squid. If you can’t get hold of Szechuan peppercorns, just use 3/4 of a tablespoon of black peppercorns instead.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon Szechuan peppercorns, ground

1 teaspoon chilli flakes

1 tablespoon sea salt flakes

4 tablespoons plain flour

4 tablespoon corn flour

2 squid cleaned

1 large red chilli

2 spring onions

Rapeseed oil for deep-frying

Salad leaves and lemon wedges to serve

Method

First up, prep the squid. If you’re a bit squeamish you might want to get your fish monger to do it for you, but it’s not hard. Rip off the head and set aside, then pull off the fin that’s towards the end of the body or ‘hood’. When you remove it, you’ll see some clear film come away with it. Try and get the rest of this off the hood. Now turn the hood inside out. You do this by poking the pointy end in on itself. As you do this the squid’s ‘backbone’ should pop out of the top. It looks like a clear bit of plastic, grab it and pull it out, and then clean out the inside of the hood with running water.

Next slice down each the side of the hood, cutting it in half. You should end up with two roughly triangular pieces per squid. Lightly score the surface of each piece on the diagonal creating a diamond pattern, then cut bite sized strips of the squid. Now grab the head and cut it just below where the tentacles join together. Discard the rest of the head, and remove the ‘beak’. This is the hard part in the center.

Set the squid aside, and get the coating ready. Grind the Szechuan peppercorns with a pestle and mortar, and then add the chilli flakes and salt and grind again. You’ll end up with a fine-ish red powder. Put the flour and cornflour in a bowl, add the pepper mix and stir together.

Ad this point, put a wok or pan on the heat with enough oil in it for deep frying. Use something low on flavour like rapeseed or groundnut. Whilst this is heating up, coat the pieces of squid in the chilli flour, and shake off the excess. Then chop the spring onion into centimeter batons, cut up and de-seed the chilli, and coat these too.

Now test the oil is hot enough by dropping in one piece of squid. If it curls up and turns a golden brown after 30 seconds or so it’s ready. Fry the squid, spring onion and chilli in batches, being careful not to over cook them (the squid will go rubbery if overcooked) and drain on a few sheets of kitchen towel.

As soon as everything is cooked and drained, eat immediately served on a bed of peppery salad leaves (rocket and watercress is good) with a wedge of lemon.

Love at first bite.