Today let me introduce you to a recipe that means a lot to me, as it was my mum’s specialty: Stuffed suid from Sète. The recipe was already in my seafood macaronade, but it deserved a dedicated post. What should you drink with it? A local Picpoul de Pinet, of course!

Serves 3/4 – Preparation time: 1 hour

Ingredients

5 or 6 large squids – one only per person is not enough as they are not the same size and their size diminishes a lot while cooking!

For the stuffing:

• 400 g sausage meat
• 1 slice of bread saoked in milk
• 1 egg
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 bunch of fresh parsley
• Salt and pepper

For the sauce:

• 2 oninons
• 2 garlic cloves
• 5 or 6 fresh tomatoes or one tin
• 1 teaspoon tomate concentrate
• 1 pinch of sugar
• 1 tablespoon harissa paste or 1 teaspoon ground chilly pepper
• 250 ml Muscat de Frontignan
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 bunch of rosemary
• Salt and pepper

Recipe

I recommend freezing the squids the day before as this will make them more tender. Then of course the day after you will need to defreeze thel in order to be able to stuff them 😉

Start by making the stuffinf: Peel and dice garlic, add to the other ingredients and mix well using both hands. If the fishmongers let you the squid tentacles, then cut them into pieces, fry them in the pan for 5 minutes and add them to the stuffing mixture.
Stuff the squids, seal with a wooden pike and keep in the fridge

Prepare the tomato sauce: Peel and dice the oinions and garlic. Fry in a large pot for a few minutes (or in the thermomix like me…), then add tomate concentrate and sugar. When things start smelling nice, add the peeled and diced tomatoes and the other ingredients. Simmer for a few minutes.

Fry the stuffed squids for a few minutes in a pan. At this stage, you can flame them with cognac. Then add them to the tomato sauce and simmer for at least 30 minutes (the longer the better, my mum used to let it simmer for 3 hours on prder to concentrate the tomate sauce).

Season to taste and serve with rice… from Camargue to stay local!