Two-Minute Calamari Sicilian Lifeguard Style

The one thing that would take some time, and I could do ahead, is make the basic tomato sauce.  Several recipes in "The Babbo Cookbook" call for this sauce so I made a batch last weekend and froze it in two-cup portions.  I've been using this recipe for my tomato sauce for a few years now.  It's the same recipe that's in "Molto Italiano," which is where I first saw the recipe.  The fact that this same recipe appars in both books tells me it's the real deal.  And everyone who's tried this sauce loves it.  The recipe calls for two, 28-ounce cans of San Marzano tomatoes.  I've found that if you use the cans marked "DOP"--the real deal from Italy--the result is markedly better.  If you're paying $2 or $3 per can, you don't have the "DOP."  They're usually $4 or $5 a can, but they're worth the extra few bucks.  Anyway, here's the beautiful sauce.

I then cooked the couscous and measured out the pine nuts, currants, red pepper flakes, and caperberries, and then cleaned the calamari.

Once everything is prepped, this moves pretty quickly--it's called "Two-Minute Calamari" for good reason.  After getting the pine nuts, red pepper and currants going, you add the caperberries, tomato sauce and couscous and bring to a boil.  Then the calamari goes in and cooks for a few minutes until opaque.  This took about 4 minutes, not 2, but that's fine by me.  

Here's the dish.

This was dynamite, in both senses.  The calamari was incredibly tender and the tomato sauce and coucous along with the pine nuts and currants added texture.  But then there was the tablespoon of red pepper flakes called for in the recipe.  Spicy!  It was a touch too hot for Heather, but she still loved it, especially because she could still pick up the pine nuts and the sweetness from the currants.  We'll dial back the heat a bit next time and use only a teaspoon or so.  To round out the Sicilian theme, we drank a Nero D'Avola from Sicily.