How to Cook Calamari with a Basil Walnut Pesto
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How to Cook Calamari with a Basil Walnut Pesto
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He is 28, but his culinary resume reads like a seasoned 40-something. Washington, D.C. native Executive Chef Barton Seaver, a StarChefs.com Rising Star of 2006 and recently nominated as a Rising Star Chef by the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, of Hook was taught at an early age about the importance of food.
Dinner in the Seaver home was a seven nights a week family affair. Eating dinner with his family was a communal celebration and involved shopping for the freshest ingredients at local markets, instilling this value in him at a young age. Mac and Cheese was never just out of the box, but prepared with a homemade bamel cheese sauce and pasta made from scratch. Summers spent at a family friends hog farm on the Chesapeake Bay, along with crabbing and going with his father to buy fresh seafood from local fisherman, taught Seaver the importance of supporting local purveyors and using quality and fresh ingredients.
According to Seaver, "Seasonality and locality made sense to me early on." Seaver began his professional career working for popular D.C. restaurants such as Ardeo, Felix, and Greenwood. After years of invaluable kitchen experience, Seaver made his way to Hyde Park, New York, where he trained at the renowned Culinary Institute of America. During his schooling, he spent time in the kitchens of Tru restaurant and The Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton under Sarah Stegner in Chicago.
Upon graduating with honors, he immediately took a fellowship position at C.I.A. as a graduate teacher in both the meat and fish classes. Working in this hands-on environment taught Seaver the importance of proper handling and techniques of exceptionally fresh products, all the while giving him direct access to sources of fish through the eastern seaboard ports. Under the guidance of Chef Corky Clark, he learned to appreciate underutilized species of fish and became a proponent of sustainable ocean products.
Seaver is a certified sommelier through the Sommelier Society of America and is continuing his studies with Wine and Spirits Educational Trust in London. Recently, he was asked to join the Board of Directors of DC Central Kitchen as the culinary force behind the non-profits educational programs. Additionally, he is also active in the Slow Food movement, and recently cooked at the bi-annual Slow Food Terra Madre conference in October 2006 in Italy. Other organization involvements include the Chefs Collaborative, the James Beard Foundation, the National Restaurant Association, the International Seafood Conference, Chefs Congress, a culinary resource to the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Seafood Alliance. As a firm believer in the idea that chefs are the keepers of food culture, he is publishing a monthly article for the online newsletter for StarChefs.com.
In an effort to educate fellow industry members, Chef Seaver will address the issue of sustainability from the perspective of a chef offering solutions to common problems they face in their profession such as buying decisions and their responsibility as the definers of what is fashionable eating. Monthly columns are archived on the StarChefs.com website with new articles posting on the 15th of each month.
How to Cook Calamari with a Basil Walnut Pesto
This video series will show how to cook calamari with a basil walnut pesto. Try this delicious take on Calamari. Barton Seaver will talk you through the steps of cleaning the calamari, cooking, making a salad and a delicious walnut pesto.
How to Cook Calamari with a Basil Walnut Pesto
Ingredients
1 lb. fresh, "dirty" and small calamari2 cloves of garlic, 1 passed over a microplane
3 tbsp. olive oil
½ lb. new potatoes
¼ green beans, snipped
3 heads frisee, trimmed and chopped
2 large handfuls of basil leaves
¼ cups of walnuts toasted (you can also substitute pine nuts or almonds)
Salt
Instructions
1. For the calamari: Ask your fishmonger to clean the squid, leaving only bodies and tentacles. "Dirty" is a market term referring to squid with skin still on. Marinate squid in 1 tbsp. olive oil, 1 clove of microplaned garlic and 1 pinch of salt. Grill calamari on high heat over charcoal about 1 minute per side.
2. For the basil pesto: Put basil, second garlic clove, walnuts and 2 tbsp. olive oil in blender and puree until smooth.
3. For the potatoes: Dice potatoes. In cold water bring to a boil for 1 minute and strain.
4. To serve: While cooking calamari, reheat potatoes with green beans in a pan on side of grill. Toss warm potatoes and green beans with frisee, salt and basil pesto. Toss to mix well. Place grilled calamari on top. Serve.
Transcripts
Barton Seaver: Hi! I am Barton Seaver. Today, we are cooking fresh calamari. It is going to be done with -- one of a great dish. It's a classic Genovese combination out of Italy. Its is basil-walnut pesto with potatoes, green beans and a little bit of bitter Furze. We are going to be sauteing the calamari, making the pesto and showing you a couple of cool things. So let's get started here cooking our calamari.
For the ingredients in this, you are going to need about a pound of fresh calamari. The best way to ask for it is dirty, meaning it hasn't been cleaned up. It's skin. Normally when you see calamari, it's completely white. But as you will see, we are going to have this nice, beautiful, purplish calamari that locks in so much of the flavor. It's important to get calamari fresh.
We are going to need two cloves of garlic and about three tablespoons of oil, a half pound of red skin potatoes, quarter pound of green beans, snipped and then blanched. We are going to need about two heads of Furze, it's going to be trimmed and chopped up, two large handfuls of basil leaves, about a quarter cup of walnuts toasted. You can use pine nuts or almonds if you would like, but walnuts I think are the best for this dish. You are also going to need a little bit of lemon to finish the dish off.
For the equipment for this you are definitely going to need a pair of tongs, one large saute pan probably about 10-12 inches would be best. You are going to need two small saucepans about a quart each and you are going to need one high speed blender. So now that we have gone through all the ingredients and all the tools that we are going to need, let's get started on cooking the calamari.










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