A Week of Recipes (2/23 - 3/1)

Calamari & Peri Peri Chicken

Happy Sunday and Ramadan Kareem to those of you participating. This week was a very rare short week of recipes. But that’s ok because there’s a lot of really exciting dishes coming your way!

I grew up in a Muslim household so the month of Ramadan is very meaningful to me. For those who do not know, it’s a month where Muslims worldwide participate in fasting from sun-up to sun-down (no food or water) and during this month a lot of really incredible food makes its way to the dinner table. I am Palestinian so a majority of these dishes are either from there or in the general Levant region since so many of our dishes are shared. So for the next few weeks I will be sharing a lot of these dishes and desserts. Stay tuned!

Also, as I mentioned last week, I have shifted to a paid subscription model so starting tomorrow, a majority of new written recipes being released will require a subscription to view. I understand this may not be ideal but I find it a necessary step to take so thank you in advance to those who choose to opt in.

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The Calamari is what I consider to be “everyone’s” favorite appetizer. I put everyone in quotes because funny enough I had a comment on one of my socials say “how could it be everyone’s if people like me hate seafood.” So let’s say it’s “arguably everyone’s” favorite appetizer. It reminds me of hot summer days grabbing a nice Italian dinner as the sun is setting. Maybe there’s an ocean view, maybe a beautiful dining room, something along those lines. And you give them a nice squeeze of lemon and dig in. Maybe I’m romanticizing them too much…it’s just fried squid. This was a pretty cheap dish to make as well. From my local fish market I was able to grab this pack of squid for about $6!

The Peri Peri Chicken though does deserve a bit of romanticizing though. This is a dish that I tried to recreate from my most memorable dinner on my honeymoon almost 3 years ago. We ate a restaurant called Bonjardim in Lisbon. It was a very modest and simple place. Nothing flashy, no reservations, and definitely not pretentious. You come by, put your name down, wait a bit, and get seated. Then anything you order off their menu was spectacular. We opted for their most popular rotisserie chicken and their picanha. And the star of the show was this Peri Peri Oil they had sitting at the table. Anything you poured this oil on was elevated to a new level. I mean I’m still talking about it today. It has a hold on me! So after a lot of research and experimenting, this is what I think is a close replication of the oil. Definitely not 100% the same and will need some tweaking but it’s pretty damn close.

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