Pasta like you would have on holiday

No matter which way I look, I am surrounded by talk of holidays - our friends have just come back from sunny Sydney, a friend's family are off to Barbados and various other friends are booking at least a week in the sun to look forward to. We went on our first family holiday to Menorca last year and paid above the odds for a package deal. I think we made the right decision as we needed to build confidence in travelling with a toddler and booking last minute has its own stresses, but this year we have opted for a late deal. I am reading 'Eat, Pray, Love' at the moment by Elizabeth Gilbert, and this is as close as I am going to get in terms of holidaying for now, so I have let my mind take me to Italy, India and Indonesia quite happily.

So where is all this talk of foreign shores leading? Calamari of course! I may have mentioned before that calamari reminds me of holidays - Greece in particular, sitting in a beach cafe in my bikini with a bowl of fried calamari rings with garlic and lemon. In Samos (Greece) I have also had a delicious dish of stuffed whole squid which was heavenly which would be interesting to re-create. Now, Leeds Market is brilliant and I can easily by ready to eat baby squid (with tentacles) for around £1 to feed two which I think is a bargain. Nigella suggests buying pasta to replicate the calamari rings that the squid are cut into, and I went for some expensive large tubes which look nothing like the seafood rings but was nice anyhow. The pasta is cooked as normal and the sauce comprises olive oil, vermouth, butter, red chilli, spring onions and parsley. The rings are fried off first for a couple of minutes and then left to simmer in the sauce for a bit. As the pasta shapes were so big therefore meaning the cooking time took longer, I overcooked the squid but it was still tasty and the texture was fine.

Exciting news that I promised on my last blog is that I have applied for Britain's Best Dish on ITV and have a couple of recipes up my sleeve which I hope the programme producers will like. My only worry is that they are simple recipes, not like last year's dishes on the programme so I hope this doesn't go against me. They are my own recipes (crikey!) and the flavours are great. Should hear this week whether I will be called for an audition - fingers crossed!

Goddess Mx