Baked Squid with Rice, Raisins & Pine Nuts

This is a flavourful, baked squid dish, on top of rice with tomato sauce, raisins and toasted pine nuts. An alternative is to stuff the squid with the rice but if you have no time (like me, during this particular weekend of making this dish), you can just put the squid on top of the rice, bake it, and it will just be as impressive. The dish is best eaten with tzatziki, a Greek yogurt based dip. The recipe for my tzatziki is here.

It's a very pretty dish...

 

Serve it this way!

BAKED SQUID WITH RICE, RAISINS & PINE NUTS

500 grams whole squid, the bigger the pieces the better

1 whole head of garlic, minced

1 onion, minced

1 cup pine nuts, toasted

1 cup blonde raisins

500 grams tomato sauce

Sprigs of Italian parsley, chopped roughly; remember to reserve some for topping after the dish is baked

1 cup red wine

2 chicken cubes

1 tablespoon sugar

Cooked white rice

1 teaspoon black pepper

2 tablespoons oil

Procedure:

1. Clean the squid. Remove the ink sack and the cartilage inside. If you want, remove the dark skin outside (though this is not a necessary step). Marinate the squid in the red wine, black pepper and 1 tablespoon oil for at least 2 hours.

2. Once you are ready to cook, drain the squid from the marinade. Do not discard the marinade.

Cut away the fin and together with the heads, chop these finely and set aside. 

Slice away the "fin" from each squid.

Chop the fins and the heads. Discard the ink sack.

3. In a pan, sauté the onion, garlic and the pine nuts.

Add the chopped up squid heads and fins and the marinade.

Add the blonde raisins.

Add the tomato sauce, sugar, chicken cubes.

Mix well and add the rice and chopped up parsley. Season to taste.

4.  Once it is evenly mixed, put the rice into an oiled glass dish.

Get the squid and arrange it on top of the rice.

Season with pepper and put into a preheated oven at 350F for 20 minutes or until squid is cooked.

5. Once the dish is cooked, take it out and sprinkle with remaining parsley. Serve hot and with tzatziki.