Midnight Madness and Salt and Pepper squid

Making and eating tasty food at work is difficult. You lack all your pantry staples, basic cooking equipment, utensils and finding the time to even do that is a monumental task within itself. With that being said, my profession encourages versatility, problem solving and creativeness, so its not surprising that we found a way to make food whilst at work.

Using a sandwich press that we carefully scrubbed clean enough to be sterile, we turned out this:

See below

Toasted garlic turkish bread. Fried haloumi from Olympus Cheeses. Lime from my dad's house and a pot of Black Swan hummus.

Super speedy L. nabbing some haloumi

And that was it. Let's not kid ourselves here, the fact that we pulled it off was a monumental task in itself.

Oh yeah and these crispbreads were tasty too

One of my many plates.
Its a very small plate honest!

Rumour abounds that one of our sister workplaces has an actual toasted sandwich maker that is used to make waffles, pancakes, pikelets, cook bacon and every sort of egg dish under the sun. So immensely jealous.

Oh for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about. A sandwich press just tends to have two flat plates to press against, and once heated up, cook really fast. The closer you are to the middle and the back of the plates, the faster your, usually bread, will cook since of the way the hinges are at the back. I also find bread tends to get squished in a wedge shape due to this, you can press down to make it more even though or even tie it down. The top plate tends to be quite heavy, so bread may end up being very flat.

Sandwich press

On the other hand, a toasted sandwich maker, has marked depressions to separate your sandwich into two distinct halves. Most toasted sandwich makers have too small a depression, or too small a section for anything besides stock standard bread, so expect cheese to ooze out, or your toasted sandwich maker to be unable to close if you put too much in. Its also the best cooking equipment for a uni student to have. TOAST EVERYTHING. The secret to magic with both is to butter the sides when you are toasting.

Toasted sandwich maker

H. and Mr M for Megababe insisted that I leave my haloumi and turkish bread behind so they could eat the rest of it at work. Why did I listen to them? Mr M for Megababe is even bringing in mornay oysters left over from his man date to work! They insisted I come in and share, but I respectfully declined. Its okay though I have salt and pepper squid for breakfast now that I've stolen a capsicum from VGirl's fridge!

Salt and Pepper Squid

Uses: Beer food. Snack food. Its not real food. Diet prevention.

Ingredients:
300-500g cleaned, squid tubes cut into rings. Or cleaned squids chopped into bits. Mmm tentacles.
125g of self raising flour
125g of tapioca starch. Possibly sub in rice flour or cornstarch
1 small red capsicum, cut into squares
1 small green capsicum, cut into squares
1 large onion, cut into square and separated layer by layer
3+ cloves of diced garlic
Lots of vegetable oil
Salt
Black Pepper

Assorted junk:
Colanders
Large dishes
Assorted large bowls
Scooping thing
Something to stir quickly with

Instructions:
1. Shove your squid into a small amount of water. Add about a tablespoon of salt and pepper into the mixture while you get things ready. This will allow everything to soak in

So attractive

2. Sift your flour and leave aside.

All my spices live in old gumball containers.

3. Cut your capsicums into smallish squares. Do this by slicing down the middle, removing seeds and those weird yellow bits. Cut this half into another half. Cut down in 1cm stripes and start getting your squares.
4. Dice all your garlic
5. Cut your onion into half. Remove that weird spindly bit in the middle, it was not meant to be square. Cut your onion into squarish bits, you might have to do this at an angle. Separate all the square bits of onion into layers.

Coreless onion.

Like this!

Beautiful.

6. Dunk your squid into the flour. Before frying, try and shake off all the excess flour.

Still disgusting.

7. Pour oil into a large pot. Put onto medium heat and begin frying the squid off in small batches, making sure not to overcrowd the pot. Turn off the heat, and pour into a colander, this catches all the gross bits of flour which will no doubt burn and taint the rest of the squid. Pour oil back in and repeat until all the squid is cooked.

Tasty.

Look at that oil @_@

8. Saute the garlic with some oil in another pan until light golden brown. Immediately remove off heat and throw the garlic on the cooked golden squid rings. Wipe down the pan and remove all garlic

GARLICCCCCCC

9. Saute the onion until fragrant.

ONIONS

10. Throw in the capsicum and stir briefly until they are combined.
11. Throw in your squid and garlic bits. Stir probably twice and remove. Don't leave it for too long otherwise the heat and moisture from the onions/capsicum will soften the crunchy batter.

My god, its beautiful.

12. Carefully remove all squid first and arrange in a pretty circle. Shove remaining garlic, onion and capsicum mix on top.

Shishi and I are organising a dinner out in the nearby future. Hurray for enabling behaviour! Let's go to all the cool food places in Brisbane!