Buttery, Garlicky, Spicy Calamari

I'm very excited to write this first post for a new blog group I'm part of, Cook This Now Together, a group of friends and friends-of-friends cooking our way through Melissa Clark's Cook This Now! Please check the blogs on the sidebar to see the group's entertaining takes on the same recipe.

Let me briefly introduce myself: my name is Maria, and I'm a transplanted Californian who has been moved all over the US but now lives in the Paris suburbs, where I teach English and immerse myself as much as possible in the food culture. I cook mostly for my family: my husband Sami, who loves meat and dislikes vegetables and soup; my daughter Julia, who loves vegetables and soup but doesn't eat any meat or fish; and my younger daughter Claire, whose tastes seem to change on a daily basis but who generally dislikes fish. Still, I cook something different every day, and usually I can find a majority who will eat and even enjoy it.

So let's get to this first recipe, which Alicia chose: Buttery, Garlicky, Spicy Calamari with Israeli Couscous. As soon as I saw the title, my first thought was, "Do they have Israeli couscous in France?"

 Well, the answer is probably yes, but in the shops I went into, they didn't. So I decided to go ahead and use the whole wheat mini-macaroni I already had in my pantry. I toasted it a bit in the pot before adding water and salt--a trick I learned from Cook's Illustrated--and I think it was a good substitution.

My second thought was, "How do you say calamari in French? Can I buy it here?" I was pretty sure I could, but I'd never seen it because I'd never shopped for it. Before I cooked this dish, I had never bought, much less touched, raw calamari. Maybe the picture above can explain why...
Well, it was not available at the outdoor market when I went, but when I went by the fish counter of my local Monoprix, there it was, encornet. I didn't buy even close to the 1-1/2 pounds Melissa calls for--I just asked for two of the beasties, and the fish guy cleaned them for me.

Once I had all the ingredients, this recipe was a snap. I made just a few tweaks to the procedure: since I don't like burnt garlic, I sautéed just the calamari and chiles first, and added the butter and garlic when the calamari was just about cooked. I then turned off the heat before adding the herbs (which were frozen and pre-chopped, because it's winter) and lime juice (oops, no lemons in the fridge).

I planned this recipe for a busy night: We had a meeting at the girls' school that night and didn't get home until 8. But Melissa writes that she considers this dish to be fast food, and indeed, wow, that was an understatement. With all the prep and even washing lettuce for a very basic salad, we were sitting down to dinner at 8:30 (a very normal dinnertime here in France). But the main appeal of this recipe in my eyes is that it's delicious. Claire, the fish skeptic, polished off a decent-sized serving without batting an eye. Julia snuck several bites of the pasta and declared it delicious. Sami went back for seconds, and also had the tiny bit leftover for lunch the next day, to my great disappointment (I had been hoping for some for my own lunch!).

So this was a great start to what I hope will be a fun, delicious, and educational adventure.