Grow Your Own Vegetable

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Members' Recipes

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Favorite Salads

If you're like me, in the height of Summer, the humble salad can get a little boring if overdone on the menu.

Here is a collection of some Members'favorites recipes that are sure to jazz things up a bit.

Asian Calamari Salad

Submitted by Mark from Hastings


NOTES: For best results, you really need to use fresh Calamari. You can make your own sweet chilli sauce, but great results can be achieved with a commercially available sweet chilli sauce. I recommend the Trident brand.

You'll need:

• Fresh Calamari tubes, approximately 1 small tube per person for a main meal
• Sweet Chilli Sauce (a bottle, quantity added to suit personal taste
• Half a lime per serving
• 1/2 Cup plain flour
• 1/4 Cup Cornflour
• Mixed lettuce leaves
• Cucumber, sliced or diced
• Baby carrots, peeled and julienne
1/2 red onion, sliced finely
• Cherry tomatoes or a couple of larger tomatoes cut into eighths

Method:

This is a super quick recipe to do, so prepare all the salad ingredients and then "build" a salad on a dinner plate for each serving. I usually start with lettuce on the bottom, then sliced cucumber, tomato, carrot and top it off with a light sprinkling of the finely sliced onion.

When purchasing your Calamari, try to buy fresh if possible and get the fishmonger to remove the head and tenticles and clean and 'skin' the tubes. You'll be left with tubes as shown in the picture.

Slice the tubes into 1cm strips, because it's a tube, this will give you the Calamari rings you want. The Calamari should be a little wet at this time (some of which is it's own juice) Place the flours in a plastic bag, add the Calamari and holding the bag closed, shake vigorously to coat the rings in the flour.

Cooking

The great thing about this recipe is that there is almost no cooking, but what there is, must be done quickly and over a very high heat. If you have a deep fryer (which is what I do) it's easy, otherwise a decent size frying pan and some good olive oil will do.

If using a deep fryer set the temperature to about 180 Deg C, otherwise, heat the oil in the frying pan until it is just smoking.

Calamari must be cooked very quickly, so about 2-3 minutes in the fryer or 1-2 minutes each side in the frying pan. Shake off the excess flour and carefully drop the rings into the hot oil.

As soon as they are cooked, remove them, drain and place on top of the salad. Drizzle with sweet chilli sauce, squeeze the lime juice over the top and serve immediately.

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