Dried and Salted Squid - кальмары

A family friend came back from her country, Ukraine , a few days ago. She brought with her a very delicious Russian/Ukrainian snack. It's called кальмары сушеные солёные - a dried and salted squid. The brand that produces it is called мoрские which can be translated as sea or marine. The brand also produces dry and salted anchovy, tuna, codfish and many more.
(read more at http://sigroup.ua/morskie_en.html)

This snack is very difficult to get. I never found it in England nor in Poland.
The packaging contains very little of the dry squid, so little that it's comparable to the amount of saffron  in a single packaging although probably not as expensive as the golden spice. Of what I'm aware this snack is traditionally eaten when drinking beer.

The dry squid is salty and sour. It's chewy, dry and mouthwatering at the same time (which I find an incredible combination as mouthwatering makes it juicy...). With every bite it becomes softer and it releases more and more of its sour-salty flavour. It smells fishy but actually doesn't have as much fishy flavour as you would think it should have.

This, along with dry and salted seaweed, is something you should never leave alone in my presence. I am absolutely addicted to it, which is a pain when I don't have it (means most of the time...)

If you ever find it anywhere first of all buy it ! I bet you won't regret it ! Second of all tell me in comments below where you got it from. Hopefully it's somewhere near where I live !

приятного аппетита !

Butterfingered Chef 

Roach with Vegetables

Hi ! Today me and my dad decided to make roaches for dinner. He bought quite a lot of them but most of them were gone within half an hour.

We marinated the roaches in salt, pepper and lemon juice. While they were marinating we've cut the vegetables (carrot, yellow pepper, parsley and zucchini). Best to cut those vegetables into julienne. Then we fried them on a pan for a little while (till the point when the carrot browns a little bit. ) I've only salted them a tiny bit.

Then we've laid the roaches on a greased baking tray and we've put the vegetables on top of the roaches. We covered the roaches with aluminium and cooked it for 15-20 minutes in the oven at 200°C.

 The fish came out very delicate and tasty and the vegetables went well with the taste of it. As seen  above we served it with puree and a peeled tomato (how to peel a tomato and make puree will be a separate post). 

The roach is a very bony fish which is why it can be difficult for some people to eat (for example me... I ate one in an hour...). 

The same method of cooking can be used when preparing salmon. 

Hope you'll try it out and enjoy it ! 

Butterfingered Chef