Vietnamese-style Stuffed Squid with Asian Slaw

Featuring in our Taste of South East Asia class, this recipe looks impressive and tastes even better!

Ingredients

• 6 x 250g Loligo Squid, cleaned
• 100g piece Angel Shark fillet, skin off
• 100g Imperador fillets, skin off, bones removed
• 250g green Prawns, peeled, deveined and finely chopped
• 8 shiitake, chopped (see notes)
• 10 water chestnuts, chopped
• 3 green onions, finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons chopped coriander
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 teaspoons fish sauce
• Freshly ground white pepper, to taste
• 1 teaspoon castor sugar
• Plain flour, for dusting
• ⅓ cup vegetable oil
• Dipping Sauce
• ½ teaspoon castor sugar
• ¼ cup fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• 1 red chilli, seeded and finely sliced
• Asian Slaw
• 1½ tablespoons fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
• ½ teaspoon castor sugar
• 1 red chilli, seeded and finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• ¼ red cabbage, shredded
• 2 green onions, finely sliced on the diagonal
• 1 carrot, coarsely shredded

Method

Make Dipping Sauce: combine all ingredients and stir until sugar dissolves.

Make Asian Slaw: combine fish sauce, vinegar, sugar, chilli and garlic and stir until sugar dissolves. Toss with cabbage, green onion and carrot.

Finely chop Squid tentacles and flaps and rinse tube well. Chop fish roughly and process in a food processor into a coarse mince. Transfer to a bowl, add Prawn, chopped Squid, shiitake, water chestnut, green onion, coriander, garlic, fish sauce, pepper and sugar and mix well. Three-quarter fill Squid tubes with the fish mixture and secure the ends with toothpicks. Lightly dust with flour.

Heat a frying pan, add oil and, when hot, pan-fry squid for 10-15 minutes, until browned all over and cooked through. Remove from pan and set aside on paper towel to rest for a couple of minutes. Slice and serve with Asian Slaw and Dipping Sauce.

Notes

Shiitake are Asian mushrooms available fresh from many fruit and vegetable shops; if they are unavailable use oyster mushrooms.

Alternative Species: Alfonsino, Bight or other Redfish (instead of Imperador); Flake, Guitarfish (instead of Angel Shark); Northern Calamari, Southern Calamari (instead of Squid).