Seafood Meze with Garlic Lemon Dressing

A few weeks back my cousin Nat and I had dinner at this awesome restaurant which serves up Beirut style street food. We ate a ton of food, literally ridiculous amounts – but it reminded us that we’d be back in sunny Cyprus come September, and we’d be chowing down on such delectables on a daily basis.

One of the meze dishes we picked out was a mixture of deep fried squid and prawns, served with a tzatziki dipping sauce. It was so immensely good, words can’t even describe.

However, I’m not one to eat fried food on a regular basis, so I came up with a twist on the dish, which is equally as sexual on the mouth, but a little healthier.

Ingredients:

• 8 large squid, cleaned
• 500g uncooked prawns, shelled and de-veined
• 200g cherry tomatoes
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
• 2 lemons
• 300g loose natural yoghurt
• 1 clove of garlic, minced or finely chopped
• Handful parsley, roughly chopped
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Pepper

Method:

Firstly prepare your squid. Separate the mantle of the squid from all the tentacles. Chop half of them into rings and leave half of them whole. Lightly score the whole mantle’s in a criss cross pattern, then place all the squid in a large bowl along with the prawns and the cherry tomatoes.

For the marinade, throw into the bowl a good glug of olive oil then the cumin, paprika, salt, pepper, the juice of half a lemon and the chopped parsley. Mix well with your hands then cover and refrigerate for a minimum of 30 minutes or up to 24 hours before cooking.

Meanwhile make the dressing. To your yoghurt add the juice of the left over lemons (1 ½), the minced garlic and a generous amount of seasoning. Mix well, cover and refrigerate until needed.

Remove your marinated seafood from the fridge around 30 minutes before cooking to bring up to room temperature. In a large flat pan, heat a tablespoon of olive oil on a medium to high heat. Once very hot add the squid, prawns and tomatoes making sure not to add all of the juices they have been marinating in. The squid will only take a couple of minutes or so to cook so keep an eye on the pan. You’ll know when it’s ready to take off the heat once the prawns have cooked through entirely and have turned pink.

Remove from the pan, drizzle with the garlic lemon dressing, sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve with lemon wedges.

Serves 6.