CALAMARI FRITTI (FRIED CALAMARI)
SERVES 4 AS CICCHETTI
“This might just be the ultimate warm-weather cicchetto. Just-fried, too hot to touch, you can often find fried calamari at a bàcaro strung on a skewer together, or sold in yellow paper cones, and it needs nothing more than a glass of cold, bubbly prosecco next to it. You can also find this as fritto misto, mixed fried seafood, which might include pieces of fish or whole tiny fish known as latterini or atherine, and crunchy whole prawns, to be eaten head and all.”
350g calamari (about 2 small calamari)
60g plain flour
Vegetable oil, for deep frying
Rinse the calamari and make sure they are cleaned. If the fishmonger did not do it for you, you can clean them by pulling off the head; use just the tentacles and cut off the part with the eyes. Pull out the beak, which you will find in the middle of the tentacles. Reach into the body and carefully pull out the glassy, plastic-like quill inside and any guts or ink sac. Pull off the wings and, as you do that, you should be able to now easily pull off all the skin,
