Hedden Family Recipes

Calamari over pasta

Ingredients:

One pound calamari, fresh or frozen. Any brand will do, but remember that it is a lot of work to clean calamari, so either get calamari that has already been cleaned or be prepared to learn how to clean it and spend quite a bit of time at it.
Half a large medium yellow onion or a whole medium yellow onion
Two medium cloves of garlic
Olive oil
Vegetable bouillon, one cube
Ground black pepper, to taste
Salt to taste
A dozen mushrooms
Vegetables (choose what you want and put in more or less to taste):
Three small zucchinis
Four medium-sized carrots
A large handful of green beans
Half a dozen stalks of asparagus
A few green onions
One teaspoon of chopped fresh parsley or parsley flakes
Grated Parmesan or Romano cheese for garnish

Directions:

If calamari is frozen, at least an hour, preferably several hours before starting to cook, open outer package and put inside package in a big pot of cold or lukewarm water to thaw the calamari. Do not use hot water, because that will start to cook the calamari too early. Once calamari has thawed, chop tubes (do not chop tentacles), and set calamari aside.
Before performing the following cooking steps, put water and a little olive oil and salt in pasta pot and put on low heat.
Put 2-3 Tbsp. of olive oil in a large sauce pan and put it on low to medium heat. Add one cube vegetable bouillon, ¼ to ½ teaspoon of ground black pepper. Chop onion and garlic, add to olive oil, and cover. While onions and garlic are sautéing, clean and chop mushrooms. Once onions are soft, but not yet brown, add mushrooms. Sauté mushrooms as desired. Remove onion and mushroom mixture and set aside. Try to keep oil in sauce pan.
Add chopped calamari to same sauce pan and set timer for 7 minutes. Turn up temperature of water in pasta pot to high.
While calamari is cooking, chop up other vegetables. When timer rings, add first carrots and then zucchini, and then stir. Set timer for 3 minutes. When timer rings, add green beans and then asparagus, and then stir. Set timer for 2 minutes. Return cooked mushrooms and onions to mixture. Chop up green onions and one teaspoon of parsley and add to mixture. Turn off calamari mixture.
When pasta water boils, add one pound of pasta and turn down heat. Do not cover. Stir periodically. When pasta is ready, drain it. Calamari and vegetable mixture can be mixed with pasta or served separately.
Serve with grated Parmesan or Romano cheese.