Cuttlefish yum!

Hello everyone and sorry for being absent!  The last week was a busy one.  I (Dia) am leaving to go back home in about 3 weeks for 2 months!  Yay!  Escape the heat and enjoy some time with family and friends back home.  Kostas is coming a month after I leave.  He is taking a month vacation and some very much needed rest.  Tony...unfortunately will stay here :(  I wish I could take him with me but the ticket to and from Greece is very expensive.  So he will be boarding at our local pet hotel where he will have lots of other doggies to hang out with, and hopefully he won't miss us that much.  So the last week was busy and the ones coming up will also be busy.  Have to buy stuff to bring back home (little presents here and there).  Organize everything before I leave, and all this before Ramadan starts here, which is on the 18th.  When it starts things will be harder to arrange, because during Ramadan everything slows down during the day and picks up during the night when fasting ends.  I will take pictures of the decorations and will try to show you some of the festivities before I leave.  I will also try to take pictures of the Iftar (breaking of the fast) dinner they have here, if we manage to do it one night.  
Till then, we  have decided to cook something else for you.  We were supposed to have a guest visiting us.  Katerina, she works where Kostas works and she would visit us from Greece.  She was very kind to bring us lots of goodies from Greece (olive oil, olives, tsipouro apart from many others).  So we would be treating her to one of my favourite seafood dishes but unfortunately she did not make it :(  That's OK another day...she will be staying a month after all.  We did have Alex visiting us though from Dubai.  And he enjoyed the dishes we made.  One was cuttlefish plaki and the other, an appetizer, which was fried cuttlefish with hummus!  All about the cuttlefish today!  Cuttlefish plaki is cuttlefish with onions and tomato sauce cooked in the oven.  The sweetness of the onions together with the cuttlefish give this dish one hell of a good taste I'll tell yah!  Yummy!  Please do try both and if for some reason you are one of those people who eat calamari and not cuttlefish try it even with calamari.  Won't be the same since cuttlefish is sweeter, but close.
Hope you enjoy it and hope Katerina makes it to our house soon!
Kali Oreksi!
Dia, Kostas and Tony

Cuttlefish plaki

Ingredients for 3 people:

• 450g cuttlefish
• 110ml extra virgin olive oil
• 750g onions
• 200g tomato sauce
• 4 pieces allspice
• 3 pieces bay leaves
• 1 tsp + 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 200ml water

for more information on how to make cuttlefish plaki please click here

Fried cuttlefish with hummus

Ingredients for 4 people:

• 450g cuttlefish
• 4 tbs all purpose flour
• 2 tbs fine semolina
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 240g chickpeas from a can
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (flavoured with seaweed optional)
• 50ml lemon juice
• 70g tahini
• 175ml extra virgin olive oil

for more information on how to make fried cuttlefish with hummus please click here