Garlic-Infused Tubetti and Grilled Calamari Recipe

Divya Gugnani: Hi I'm Divya Gugnani and we’re here at the “A Voce” where diners enjoy ingredient driven regionally inspired Italian fair. So let’s go behind the burner and meet the chef. I'm here with the Executive Chef Missy Robbins. Missy, what are we making? Missy Robbins: We’re making a little fresh pasta called Tubetti with grilled calamari. It’s a very light fresh summery dish. It’s just found on the menu. Divya Gugnani: So, Missy garlic is something that people use in their cooking everyday. So what kind of garlic do you buy? How do you prepare it? Missy Robbins: I always buy a whole garlic. The whole bulb I just find it fresher when you cook. My food is very simple so when you cook very simple food everything has to be as fresh as possible, as clean as possible, so a really easy tip that I do is, these are just the garlic cloves. I took the head and I peeled all the cloves off. And what we do is we just soak them in a little water. The warm water loosens the skin off a little bit. It will be really easy to feel you can either do it like this or you can kind of just take a paring knife and it comes right off. Divya Gugnani: You peel it right off. Missy, another thing about cooking Italian food is that you notice the Italians use a lot of garlic and sometimes they feel like the home cook. They doesn’t know how much to use. Missy Robbins: One of the most important things I think I’ve learned when I cook in Italy was that they don’t use a lot of garlic especially in the North where I was living. They used it but they often will take like a whole clove and then sauté in oil but they will pull that clove out. Divya Gugnani: So, mildly kind of— Missy Robbins: Well, mildly but it’s well balance. It’s about not just tasting garlic, and you’ll taste when you taste this dish that there’s a garlic in it, but it’s not the predominant flavor, just one of several flavors that makes the dish what it is. This has been marinated in lemon zest, orange zest, a little bit of chili, parsley, garlic and olive oil. So you start on a really hot grill. It already has oil in it. They just go through your hottest part of the grill, and you want to make sure you kind of wipe some oil off, otherwise. Divya Gugnani: So you don’t want to get flame up. Missy Robbins: They’ll get a lot of flare up. Alright, so we’re going to cut it lengthwise which can of for this for because anyway the same shape as the pasta we’re going for. We start our sauce. We start with the little olive oil just a little chopped garlic. We just keep it in a little olive oil, so that it doesn’t dry out. So after the garlic is kind of sweat in your olive oil. These are tentacles to the calamari and it has been very slowly braised in olive oil with all of the same kind of elements that were in the bodies. So you’re just going to put your tentacles in here, and you want some of that juice that’s all flavor from the braising. Divya Gugnani: Unless if you don’t have tentacles you’re cooking at home. What would you use instead? Missy Robbins: Extra bodies I mean this is just an added floss. Divya Gugnani: Right. Missy Robbins: That you will get, but you can get this from your local fish market. A little white wine, this is sort of the secret to this. These are the juices like we talked it about before from the calamari, so when you’re grilling that calamari and you pull it off, and you have it in the pan. Don’t throw it out it’s the good stuff. This is dry to orange. This is just a zest of an orange that we cook in a little simple syrup so just the sweetness and the bitterness usually really cool chilies that we just found from the Basilica. They’re not hot. They’re sort of a sweet, smoky, earthy chili. Divya Gugnani: So, Missy what we’re having? Missy Robbins: We’re having this awesome fresh pasta dish. This is just one of our menu. It’s called Tubetti. It’s a grilled calamari, dried orange and basil, that’s got a little garlic, a little chili in it. Divya Gugnani: So, Missy what do you think? Missy Robbins: I think that this is a delicious pasta otherwise, I'm not sure it would be on my menu. People always ask me what to order when I go to tables and I talk to the guests. It’s all great. It kind of just depends on your mood, and this is a great dish for the summer, for the warmth because it’s light and sort of seafoody and fresh. Divya Gugnani: It’s perfect for summer. Missy, thank you for having us. Missy Robbins: Thank you for having me. Divya Gugnani: On behind the burner you can take advantage of our special promotion to enjoy fresh, flavorful, crisp for wrench heirloom garlic. Stay tune to behind the burner where we give you the tips, tricks and techniques that are lighting the culinary on fire.