Stir-Fried Squid with Chili Sauce and a Giveaway!

For this, my 7th dish for Emeril’s One-Pot Blogger Cooking Party, I decided to step WAY outside of my comfort zone.  Shane and I are both fans of squid, but I’ve never cooked it myself.  Now seemed as good a time as any to give it a shot.  The other unknown here was just how hot the dish would be.  With chili sauce in the title and two different kinds of chili among the items on the ingredient list, I suspected it would be intense.  I’m sort of a wimp when it comes to spicy foods but we were both excited about this one so we threw caution to the wind 🙂

I wasn’t sure how to buy the squid (calamari); a quick bit of research seemed to indicate that frozen was the way to go.  Many times if squid is available at the seafood counter at your store it’s been previously frozen anyway.  I found mine at Whole Foods, but later saw it at several other grocery stores, so it wasn’t a tricky ingredient to source.  When I opened the package, the squid were already separated into bodies and tentacles, so there wasn’t much work to do.  I simply rinsed them before I threw them into the pan.

This recipe is in the wok section of Emeril’s new book, and like many stir-fried dishes, it came together super fast.  Once the ingredients were prepped, it took less than 10 minutes to cook.  We sampled a few bites of the squid straight from the pan and they were good – tender and not chewy or rubbery.  After adding the remaining ingredients in the stir-fry and the sauce, though, this was probably our least favorite among the dishes we’ve tried from the book.  For me, there was just way too much heat – I couldn’t enjoy the other flavors at all.  Shane thought the level of heat was ok, but couldn’t get past all of the cabbage.  Obviously these are personal preferences and not necessarily problems with the recipe so if you like spicy foods and cabbage, you’ll probably have better results 🙂

And now for the fun part – a GIVEAWAY!  Today you have a chance to win a set of Flame Table Art by Emeril from Zak Designs.  The set includes 7 red serving dishes which can be arranged in several configurations – they’d be really fun for snacks or appetizers at a party.  Had I not had so much fun at a wedding last night (more on that tomorrow) and totally slept in today (oops) I’d have taken pictures to show you, but here’s one from Zak’s site!  The dishes are stackable so they’re easy to store when not in use too.

Sound good??  To enter this giveaway, simply leave a comment on this post!  I’d love to hear your best tip for entertaining, if you’re inclined to share.

To Receive Bonus Entries (you must leave a separate comment for each)

1.  Like Zak! on Facebook
2.  Follow Tracey’s Culinary Adventures on Twitter
3.  Like Tracey’s Culinary Adventures on Facebook

{Note: if you already do any of these things, that counts too, just leave a comment for each one telling me.}

Comments on this giveaway will close on Friday, September 30, 2011 at 11 pm EST. A winner will be chosen using random.org. The giveaway is open to U.S. residents only (sorry!). Good luck!

**Updated: Comments are now closed. Winner will be announced on October 1!**

Congratulations to commenter #22, Tara! Hope you enjoy your flame serving dishes! Thank you to everyone who entered.