Squid rings "a la Romana"

Seafood is very good both as a snack and in salads. Especially popular is the Spanish "tapas" (hot appetizer), called "Squid rings in Roman". Why in Roman? It is difficult to give an unambiguous answer to this question today. Either the ancient Romans were left as a legacy after their conquests, or the recipe was brought to Spain from Rome ... But it's better not to puzzle over the origin of the name of the dish, but quickly to do its cooking. Moreover, the process itself should not take us more than half an hour.

So, take 2-3 small carcasses of our cephalopod mollusk. To speed things up, you can buy in the store already peeled and chopped squid rings, which only need to unfreeze. In a different situation, we face the task of clearing the body of the upper film. It is quite easy to do this: we squeeze the carcass and pull the film over ourselves, removing it, like a stocking. Another thing is, if you have to cut off the tentacles and cut off the head, gut, scrape the ink ... The process can drag on.

Let's say you coped with the case of shelling the shellfish. Now it needs to be welded. And this is the main secret of how to make squid rings in batter so that they turn out to be tender and tasty, and not like car tires in the test. Cook them for no more than two minutes. Throw squid better once in boiling water, and after heat treatment it must be thoroughly dried. If you are dealing with a carcass, cut it into rings with a thickness of up to one centimeter.

For the preparation of batter, we will need: two eggs, white flour, salt, pepper, half a glass of milk. Shake eggs with salt and pepper (you can add a pinch of sugar). We add milk and sifted flour, stirring continuously, until the lumps disappear and a homogeneous mass similar in structure to sour cream is obtained. In a deep fryer or in a frying pan, we warm up any vegetable oil. We dip squid rings into a batter and fry on both sides until golden brown, then spread on a paper napkin so that it absorbs excess fat. The dish is served in a hot form.

This delicacy is best served by gentle dressings based on mayonnaise, but you can also experiment. For example, crush two cloves of garlic in half a cup of mayonnaise. Squid rings in batter can simply be sprinkled with lemon juice or use the ready-made "Marinara" sauce. For lovers of acute we recommend To make such a refueling for seafood: ketchup (not piquant, and "Gentle") is mixed with mayonnaise in the proportion of 1: 3 and we pour a teaspoon of cognac.

Squid rings are popular in the Southeast cuisine. There they do not brew molluscs, but marinade for half an hour in lemon juice with salt and pepper. In the batter together with the above ingredients, add a glass of light beer and mix with a mixer, then give a few minutes to settle. The rings are first dipped in flour, and then they are lowered into the dough. Fry on a well-heated frying pan, completely immersing in red-hot fat. In the East they are eaten as a cold snack for beer or white dry wine.