This recipe is more of a review, I found it on Epicurious and it’s a recipe for the Busaba Eat Thai squid which is one of their best dishes and everyone loves it so I wanted to try and make it myself. It’s really delicious and what really makes it is the sauce. It’s brilliant with Thai sticky rice and some stir fried pak-choi. The pickled peppercorns are optional if you can’t be arsed, but I love them and made a big batch to use on other recipes, like my curries.

Recipe

Serves 2

Ingredients

1/2 lb squid sleeves

Batter

• 3 egg whites 
• 3 tablespoons of plain flour or gluten-free flour
• 2 tsp of corn flour
• 1 tsp of corn starch
• lots of cracked black pepper 
• a dash of cayenne pepper 
• dash of sugar 
• dash of salt 
• 1 and half tbs of soya sauce

Sauce

• 1 tbs minced fresh ginger
• 1 small bunch of coriander
• 3-4 glugs of oyster sauce
• 1 tbs of maple syrup

to garnish, green pickled peppercorns (recipe in my search bar or list of recipes)

For frying 

1 jar of coconut oil (or any oil of your choice, not olive as it burns)

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How:

Prepare the squid sleeves by cutting them length wise the score crossways. Do not cut through. This will help them curl up when you fry them. Then cut them in half again. Mix all the batter ingredients, so it’s like pancake batter. One of my followers, who made the recipe whipped up the egg whites first which she said made the batter much lighter. 

Put all the oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan, and heat till about 350F degrees. If you add a couple of drops of water in it should sizzle. Lower the temperature a little and dip the squid in the batter and fry two at a time till golden, a minute or two. Drain on paper and make the sauce by mixing all the sauce ingredients (I whizz it in a blender first) and putting it in a little pan and heating till gently boiling.

Remove from the heat and dip the calamari in it and serve with the peppercorns. Alternatively, omit the batter all together and follow the recipe and it’s still delicious but much less labour intensive. Serve with Thai sticky rice and some stir fried veg.

I shop at:
Waitrose
Sainsbury’s
Tesco
Lidl