Simple Asian-style seafood feast

I love seafood. Here is very simple Asian-style seafood feast of fish, prawns, and calamari inspired by my Nana who sparked my love of food.

This is a meal I made to celebrate my Nana’s birthday. It features Asian-style flavours with a grilled salad-filled tortilla and I even made a brilliant sparkling pineapple drink.  My Nana, Ngaire, was the reason why I studied food science and love cooking – she just made it so much fun! She passed away, but every year on her birthday I try and have seafood, which is something that links me to her. She would have loved this meal!

There is calamari cut into strips as well as the more traditional rectangles with scoring. I marinated them in a spice / oil paste – I honestly can’t remember exactly what I put in, but it would have been about 2 tablespoons of oil, with about a teaspoon of spices including cayenne pepper and cumin. You can quite easily tinker with the idea by adding your own favourites. I then put the cut up calamari into this, mixed well, and left for about 5 minutes.

I then grilled them in a pan for a few minutes on either side. Make sure the pan is hot and don’t overcook the calamari. To accompany the calamari, I cooked some fish fillets exactly the same way using the same marinade. You can easily just make a whole meal from calamari if you prefer.

I heated the tortillas on an open flame on my gas cooktop. You can also do them in a hot fry pan for 30 seconds each side if you can’t do it on an open flame. Push the tortilla into a small container such as a ramekin, and let it cool down. Once it’s cool, it should stay in the shape. This forms the cup for the salad, and makes it more interesting for my family.

Next I made a basic salad using capsicum, carrot, and lettuce. Then I added some grilled sesame seeds for a little flavour, and some mango on the side. A couple of spring rolls each, some dipping sauce from the marinade and dinner was served – happy birthday Nana!