I love to eat octopus! The first time I ever ate it was with an Italian friend, Bruno, who took me to a Greek Restaurant near Ft. Lauderdale, where we ate it grilled and I was in love! (With him and the octopus) Usually, I eat it almost every time I see it on a menu and prepared in many different ways. I love them all.

We buy octopus fresh at the market, but I always freeze it right away and then thaw before cooking it. As a result, freezing changes the texture in a good way and makes it less tough and easier to cook. So, the following is one of my favorite recipes and it is good hot or cold.

Ingredients:

One octopus (about 2 lbs)
Extra virgin olive oil
Lemon
Parsley
Salt
Pepper
Garlic
3-4 potatoes

Clean and empty the sack. Take out the eyes and the “beak” which holds some tiny bones. Boil some salted water. Hold it by the head and emerge the tentacles in the water using a dipping motion. Do this four or five times so that the tentacles curl up nicely. It needs to be almost completely submerged. Cook it for at least 45 minutes or up to an hour.

Take it out of the water and drain. Cut into small pieces.

In a bowl blend the oil with the chopped parsley and garlic. Add the lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste. Pour the blend over the octopus and let sit for at least 2 hours before serving. You can serve at room temperature or cold.

However, if you want a hardier meal, you can throw a few whole potatoes into the boiling water with the octopus. When they are cooked, cut into chunks and serve with the pieces of octopus. Pour the sauce over all.

I found this recipe for grilled stuffed calamari in a Greek cookbook several years ago and have used it extensively. The recipe in the Greek style was significantly different from this one in that the calamari were only stuffed with feta cheese. The feta was marinated in the same way as I’ve shown here, but the other ingredients I have included for the stuffing were left out.

That just goes to show how flexible this recipe is. You can stuff these delicious seafood tubes with whatever your heart desires!

Experiment with ingredients that you like. This is my favorite version so far. I haven’t included the quantity of the ingredients, because that’s not the way that I cook, and it depends on the size of the calamari. These were huge, but honestly, I prefer ones that are medium to hold enough stuffing, yet still be tender.

Ingredients

Calamari cleaned and skin and removed, tentacles cut off but left in one piece
Olive oil
Oregano
Crushed red pepper
Garlic
Feta cheese
Chopped fresh parsley

Combine the oil, garlic and spices and make a marinade. Cut the feta into cubes and put it and the squid into the marinade and let sit in refrigerator for several hours.

Additional ingredients

Spinach (frozen, thawed or fresh sautéed-all water removed)
Sundried tomatoes, chopped
Capers, chopped

After the calamari and feta have marinated for a while, Remove the calamari and combine some of the marinade liquid with the spinach sundried tomatoes, capers and feta to make the stuffing. You want it to be moist, but not too oily. I strained mine to include all of the garlic bits and the parsley in the stuffing. Salt and pepper to taste. The feta will provide some salt so be careful.

Put the stuffing into the calamari and close the open end with a toothpick.

I used a grill pan over the stove, but you can put them on a gas or charcoal grill. They don’t need to cook very long, but it also depends on the size of the calamari. I cooked my really large ones for 5 minutes on each side. The heat should be medium and the main thing you want to accomplish is to heat the stuffing while grilling the calamari. Put the tentacles on a skewer and grill them half the time of the stuffed calamari.

Serve all with fresh lemon wedges to squeeze over it. Enjoy! I served mine with a simple salad of avocado, tomatoes, and onion. Let me know if you come up with another variety of stuffing that, I should try.

Gazpacho is the perfect summer food. The weather is fantastic in Tangier at this time of year. A real spring! Sunny and warm, but not too warm. High temps have been around 75 during the day and low’s in the low 60’s. That hasn’t stopped the summer vegetables from coming in and I’m looking for things to make with them. Nothing beats this Spanish hot weather cold soup.

It’s delicious as a starter or as a light lunch with some cheese and bread. I tweak this basic recipe to include different numbers of the listed vegetables depending on what’s available and taste. I also like to spice it up a bit with Tabasco or cayenne pepper and add some sour cream to the garnish. Instead of the basil, I also like to mix it up sometime with cilantro.

Try this gazpacho recipe and then mix it up. Let me know what changes you make to make it even more wonderful

1 Cucumber-not peeled
2 Red bell peppers
4 plum tomatoes
1 small red onion
3 cloves of garlic
23 ounces of Tomato Juice
¼ cup fresh Lemon juice
¼ cup olive oil
½ tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
Fresh basil

Roughly chop all of the vegetables and the put individually into a food processor and pulse to desired consistency. Combine in a large bowl. Add the juices, oil, and spice. Mix well and chill for 24 hours before serving. You can make it as chunky or as smooth as you like. Chiffonade the basil and garnish the top with it.

When I was a little girl, I used to help my grandmother make all types of jams, jellies, and marmalades. We would usually pick the fruit ourselves, or sometimes she would buy it from the farmer’s market. We made blackberry, strawberry, apple, plum, and peach jams.
It was a lot of work, and I never thought about making it as an adult. You had to wash and boil jars to start and then deal with the fruit and then cover the preserves with wax and boil them to seal them.

When I was in Italy, I regularly watched a cooking show called, Il Menu di Benedetta. It’s a simple cooking show…just my style. I found this recipe there and it only has four ingredients. There is some labor involved, but nothing too difficult. The oranges in Morocco just begged me to make it again here.

I found sultana raisins and walnuts in the medina market and brown cane sugar in the supermarket.
It makes nice Christmas, housewarming, or hostess gifts and is luscious over cream cheese surrounded by crackers at a party or spread on toast in the morning. Enjoy!

4 ½ lbs of oranges
4 ¼ cups of Brown cane sugar
6 ounces of sultana raisins
4 ounces of walnuts

Grate the peel from the oranges being careful not to get into the white part, which is bitter. Put the grated peel in a bowl.

Peel the oranges and eliminate all of the white. Section the oranges, cut each section in half, and eliminate any seeds.

Put the oranges into a pan over a medium-high flame for about 30 minutes, stirring regularly with a wooden spoon.

Pour the raisins into a bowl with a little boiling water to plump them up. Drain before adding to the orange mixture later on.

During the 30 minutes that the oranges are cooking, add small batches of the orange peel, sugar, and raisins and mix well. At the end of the 30 minutes, all of the ingredients should be in the mixture. Cook another 20 minutes at the same medium-high flame, stirring regularly.

At the end of the 20 minutes, add the chopped walnuts and stir well. Let them cook with the mixture for 2-3 minutes and then ready the jars.

The jars should be the type that hermetically seal. They are easily available. I used two types of jars. One had a screw on lid with a rubber seal on the top. The other was the type that has a rubber ring and hinges on it. Either type is fine.

Spoon the mixture into the jars while it is extremely hot. Leave a little space for air at the top of the jar. Once the jar is full, close the top and turn upside down on a protected surface. (A large wooden cutting board or wooden table or countertop, covered with towels works well).

Leave the mixture upside down until it has cooled. This is how the jars seal themselves.

The marmalade is ready to eat right away but is best after about 30-45 days when the flavors have melded together. Refrigerate after opening.