4 lovely side Recipes

dozen eggs, milk or half and half or cream, asparagus, tips only (just save the rest for stock or a dinner side dish or soup, shallots, sliced into rings, fresh mushrooms, chopped, tarragon pepper blend (i buy mine from myspicesage.com and love it!) or sub fresh or dried tarragon, a lil sage, dill, and fresh ground black pepper, or fresh of the above ingredients, olive oil, gruyere, shredded, kosher or sea salt, butter

apples , i used macintosh, onion, very thinly sliced, maple syrup, cinnamon, nutmeg (just a sprinkle)

this recipe yields calamari lighter in color than most restaurant versions , so keep this in mind when frying. follow the cooking time, not the color, and you will have perfectly cooked squid. while we love the texture and visual appeal of the tentacles, not everyone does; most fishmongers will gladly sell only bodies if you so desire. before slicing the squid, check the bodies for beaks the fishmonger might have missed. they look and feel like pieces of transparent plastic. for a specialty native to federal hill, the italian neighborhood in providence, rhode island, toss the fried calamari with thinly sliced rings of jarred pepperoncini. the spicy bite of the peppers and the tanginess of the brine are surprisingly good with fried squid. for the best results, clip a candy/deep-fry thermometer to the side of the saucepan to monitor the temperature of the oil., unbleached all-purpose flour, fine-ground cornmeal, ground black pepper, cayenne pepper, salt, egg whites, squid , bodies sliced crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick rings, tentacles left whole, vegetable oil for frying, lemon , cut into wedges