I hope you all lead happy and healthy lives and that any problems are resolved soon.

Learning to cook the foods you love the most is a rewarding experience, not to mention it's usually a lot cheaper. Today I want to share with you how I made spaghetti with fresh calamari that I bought from our favorite fish dealer. Since he always cleans our fish, I thought he'd do the same with the calamari we bought, but apparently there was fine print. I managed though; you will find it below :P

We will make spaghetti for four people. Here we go!

• 700 grams of fresh calamari, which will be converted into 500 grams of clean calamari.

These ones are the small type.

• 1 cup julienned white onion
• 1/2 cups julienned sweet chili
• 1/2 cups julienned green bell pepper
• 1 teaspoon freshly crushed garlic
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 4 tablespoons lemon juice
• freshly ground black pepper
• 500 gr spahetti
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• Salt to taste

If you've never cleaned your own calamari, you'll be happy to know that although you have to get your hands dirty, it's actually a very simple process.

You'll just need a chopping board and a sharp knife; you'll also need plenty of water because their skin will stick to your fingers and you won't want to work without constantly washing your hands.

In the GIF below you can see how I remove all the contents first--including the ink bag (which looks like a capsule) and the feather (which looks like plastic)--and then find a cut to take the skin and remove it easily.

The edible parts are the body and tentacles...

...We will throw away the heads and the rest, except for the ink bags if we plan to use them.

If desired, you can remove the membrane of the ink sac in a mortar and add white wine to make sauce for black spaghetti.

Let the clean calamari soak in water while you cut the vegetables. Put some lemon juice and salt in the water to intensify their flavor and freshness.

Julien the onion, chili, and green bell pepper. Crush the garlic in a mortar.

Sauté the vegetables in a large pan--I used a wok--starting with the onion, followed by the bell pepper and chili. Lastly, add a teaspoon of sugar, to achieve a beautiful color and a very desirable contrast in oriental flavors.

While the vegetables are browning, drain and chop the calamari and add it to the pan.

Stir everything quickly...

... 2 minutes later, add the garlic. And 2 minutes later, add the salt, lemon juice and soy sauce. Finally add the half cooked spaghetti and remove the pan from the fire.

Cover and let stand 10 minutes before serving to finish cooking and integrate all ingredients.

Sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper.

Enjoy!

All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY(https://giphy.com/create/gifmaker) for all them.