Lana Condor and Chris Make Fried Calamari

And you're going to wanna pull to separate the head

from the body.

[Lana screams]

Yeah.

[Lana screaming]

Hey Lana.

Hi, I am such a huge fan.

I'm so excited to be cooking with you today.

You are the true pro here

when it comes to being on camera, trust me.

I smell a very distinct smell in my kitchen

on the board in front of me.

Speaking of, you know, kind of what's

under that towel.

Today we're going to be making fried calamari

with homemade aioli.

Oh.

The catch is there's calamari that you buy that's cleaned.

And then there's what you have under that towel,

which is uncleaned squid.

Oh my God.

And keep breathing.

Yeah, I'll keep breathing.

I am in Seattle.

It is morning, I did just wake up.

I have no food in my stomach

and I am feeling slightly nauseous.

This may or may not help.

I'm here like 3,500 miles away.

I'm feeling brave today.

Oh yeah, they're looking right at me.

There's like what you get when you order calamari,

and then there's this.

There's going to be a few key moments, all right.

So there's cleaning of the squid.

There is making of the aioli,

and then there is going to be deep frying.

Just curious, have you ever done that before?

I watched a video one time of someone making mayonnaise.

So you're a pro, so you know what you're doing, great.

I'm really, I'm really excited,

I-I'm curious about the texture.

[laughing]

New experiences are often good.

I think it's going to be easier than you think.

The first step is probably to put some gloves on.

It might just kind of give you a little bit of-.

A mental barrier.

So we're going to open the bag.

You might just want to kind of turn down the bag.

Whoo baby, that is pungent.

Remove one squid.

[screaming]

I touched it! [screaming]

Okay it's fine, oh I touched!

Okay no, it's fine, it's fine.

Okay, I removed one.

There's a tubular body.

That would be the head with the eye.

There's some kind of fin-like swimmerettes

towards the bottom of the body.

So you're going to want to grasp the head

just behind the eye and hold the body in your other hand.

And you're going to want to pull

to separate the head from the body.

[screaming]

Yeah, boom, you did it.

Now in the body you're going to feel kind of a hard

kind of like cartilaginous protuberance

which is known as the quill.

And you can just pull it straight out.

Is it this?

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Lana] Oh, okay.

[Chris] Boom, pull it out, quill.

Wow, it's reminding me a little of like a wishbone.

Kind of like the wishbone of the sea.

Let's deal with the tentacles, okay?

The tentacles are actually that bit

that are in front of the eye.

Okay. Yep.

[Chris] Cut to tentacles just in front of the eyeballs.

And you may have little bit of ink in there

and that's totally cool.

Oh, wow, pretty clean.

All right, so if you pick up the tentacles

and you kind of like turn them inside out

there's a little cartilaginous bit in there called the beak.

It just kind of came out.

Okay perfect so put it in a clean bowl.

All right, Sue, shh.

[cat meowing]

Quiet, we're filming a video.

Now back to the body of the squid.

That colored bit is sort of a membrane

that you can pull off the body.

Yeah, I think so.

Oh no, I got it, I got it, nevermind.

Yeah!

Once you have that membrane off

now it's starting to look like calamari.

You know, as like most people think of it

where you have the tube of the body

and then you have the tentacles.

This one that I have right here feels

like there's more in it than the other ones.

Depending on how many you've done,

maybe you're about good.

I must say, I feel like we're doing pretty good here.

I've been watching you and you are in a flow.

The highest compliment.

[Chris] I've gone to the sink, I'm washing my calamari.

If you broke an ink sack, as I certainly did

it's a good time to kind of get it out.

Slippery little suckers.

Wow, there's so much that I didn't realize is in there.

[Chris] I would give like your cutting board

a good scrub down.

Andrew, my friend Andrew, who has also been our roommate.

What is this, is this a squid?

Yeah. Wait.

Yes, I told you I was doing this.

I'm a huge fan.

Thank you, Andrew.

This is surreal.

I'm sorry to interrupt.

When I'm like really sad, I watch all your videos.

That is so touching.

All righty, that was fun.

We're going to cut the bodies into rings

so that it's bite size.

You don't have to measure it.

So you can repeat that with all

of your beautifully clean squid there, okay?

Yours look really clean to me.

Pat them dry a little bit.

We want to start to control moisture with an eye

towards deep frying because water and deep frying, not good.

We can set them aside while we move on.

We're going to take two minutes just to pour our oil

into the pot that you're going to be frying in.

It should come up, like at least like two inches

up the sides of your pot.

It comes to about here.

[Chris] You could do a touch more.

Thank you for the visual.

Oh, I didn't even turn it on.

Kind of a medium.

Okay, so for the aioli, the first step,

cut our lemon in half.

[Lana] Take it and cut it in half.

Hold the lemon with like kind of like a claw hand.

These are going to be the slices that are going to get fried

alongside the calamari.

[Lana] So as thin as possible?

As thin as possible, claw, claw.

The seeds kind of work against you.

Save your fingers.

That is great advice.

Take some of the seeds out,

any of the ones that you can kind of readily access

just because these are kind of fun to bite

into once the dishes done.

While you have your knife out, ooh yeah.

Oh yeah.

[Chris] You got the condiments.

I feel like showing your fridge

to someone is like a very intimate experience.

Here, I'll show you mine.

Look at this thing, this a frigging disaster.

I've got like quart containers, pint containers,

squid riding on eggs.

[laughing] Thank you for doing that,

I feel very supported.

Take two scallions, just trim off that root end.

Yup, and then cut the white and light pale green sections

only into roughly one inch pieces.

Clear yourself a little bit of space to work there.

50% of the game in terms of just like being

a good cook overall is just having a clean cutting board.

Wow.

Do you have a small glass bowl available?

We're just going to use this one.

That's beautiful.

That bowl can fit into and kind of ride on top of.

That works, okay.

It'll help you immobilize that glass bowl when it's

on top of your cutting board so it doesn't move around.

The aioli is going to involve a lot of whisking.

So the less that that glass bowl moves,

the better it is for you.

If you have a side towel, you can put it

like in-between.

Crack the egg on your cutting board.

Pry it open such that the whites fall into that small bowl

because we only want the yolk going into that large bowl.

[Lana] Got it.

[Chris] Without stressing too much,

just lay your yolk into that large bowl.

It's okay if there's a little bit of white in there, yeah.

There's nothing more satisfying than

like laying it down and it didn't break. [laughing]

I broke mine.

You're never going to know, bam.

Get it in the bowl before anybody knows any different.

So take your half of a lemon.

Hold it over your open fingers just to catch any seeds,

and then let's squeeze it just gently just to get

about a teaspoon of lemon juice right on top of the yolk.

Pinch of salt, you have a neutral oil, a grapeseed oil.

You're going to want a half a cup of your grapeseed.

Why am I doing?

[Chris] You can read it on the top.

Oh yeah, well I've got-.

It's cool, and then on top of that, put one quarter cup

of your olive oil so that you have a total

of three quarters of a cup of blended oil.

Take your whisk.

So start whisking.

Whisk it altogether.

With your other hand pick up that blended oil,

just a couple of drops just to start.

This is very exciting.

I've never done this before.

Keep whisking in a few drops at a time.

We're trying to create an emulsion.

How's your arm?

The whisking is maybe the hardest part

of this journey so far.

[Chris] For sure.

Your egg yolk mixture should look really smooth and creamy.

[Lana] My hand is aching!

Feel free to change your hands.

Oh wow, I don't think I can whisk with my other hand.

I have to want it.

There's just no substitute.

You can start to stream in that oil

in a very thin even stream while whisking constantly.

It's a little bit like trying to pat your head

while rubbing your belly.

This is crazy.

You've created mayo.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

I like running a marathon and I see the finish line

and it's so close.

Is it still looking creamy?

It looks like it's looking creamy, yes.

Grab one of your cloves of garlic, take the skin off

of just one of the cloves using your Microplane.

You can grate like maybe a third of that clove

into your aioli and then just give

the Microplane a little bit of a tap to release it.

Aioli is done.

You might just want a pinch of salt in there.

Ooh, we're ready to fry pretty much,

aside from the latter.

You have that large metal bowl.

We're going to measure some dry ingredients.

One cup of all purpose flour.

Ah, open.

[Chris] They say opening the bag is the hardest part.

And then you're going to need your cornmeal as well.

[laughing] Okay, one cup, it's in.

One cup, yup.

We need one tablespoon of kosher salt.

One teaspoon of ground black pepper.

Put a bunch of good grinds in there.

We're just seasoning the dredge that we're going to use

to coat the calamari.

[Lana] Got it.

The only thing now that's left is a quarter

of a teaspoon of cayenne pepper.

Whoo, got a hit of that cayenne.

Whisk these ingredients together.

You just want everything to be evenly incorporated.

All of the squid, all of the tentacles can go right

into that flour mixture.

The best way to mix it in is just using your hands.

This is a really nice easy way to do calamari

because it's not a wet batter.

This is so satisfying.

It smells much lighter than I imagined it would.

Take some of those scallions and some

of those bits of lemon.

Those can go right into that dredge mixture as well.

And we're ready to fry.

So the target temperature for the oil, 375.

[Lana] Okay, so I'm at 340.

It'll only take a couple of minutes for it to come up.

The next thing is to kind of get back set up at the stove.

Yeah oh, you've got a nice stove.

Here's the deal.

We're going to put in about half

of our squid and lemon and scallion.

Pick it up with your fingers and kind of shake off a little

of that excess flour mixture and then place it in the oil.

Don't drop it in the oil.

This is the easy part, okay?

[gasps] Wow!

[Chris] Beautiful, gentle.

[screams]

We're good, we're good.

It's popping at me.

[Chris] You're looking for the bubbling to kind of

start to lessen.

And then for the calamari to be kind of light golden brown.

They're actually kind of like there I feel,

they're pretty golden.

[Chris] You can pluck them out with your spider then.

Yeah, like the tentacles are a little darker.

That's okay. [laughing]

And I'd say for this batch, you know, maybe just

hold off on putting any more lemon or scallion in there.

Those are kind of higher moisture

that may cause more popping.

Woo baby, okay I'm dropping them in.

I'm like regarding it like it's alive.

Okay. We're fine. [screams]

People give me a hard time for like my goggles, you know?

But like honestly those things have saved me, you know?

Yeah, I bet.

Brad and his like weird fermentation experiments

that blow up in your face like literally.

My second batch is coming out.

I think same.

We did it! [laughing]

We did it, so you can transfer your calamari

to your little serving platter there.

Then you can garnish just with some leaves of basil.

Fill it however it makes sense to you.

I'm very proud of this moment.

I love the smell of basil, wow.

Oh same, so you can put a little aioli yeah,

in one of your little glass bowls there.

All right, count of three, show the Zoom.

Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.

One, two, three.

That's wonderful.

Quick, I need to take a picture of it.

It's so pretty, I'm so proud.

Okay, okay, I'm ready, I'm ready, okay. [laughing]

I've literally never taken one before.

Going in with the tentacle, yes!

I'm excited, okay.

One, two, three.

Mm-mm, it is so flavorful and so light.

Much lighter than I'm like typically used to.

It's a little bit drier

but that's what keeps it like super light.

With a wet batter it's just a little bit trickier

to get that optimal kind of balance.

I learned so much.

Obviously I learned how to clean a squid.

Quill. Okay, wow.

Holding the lemon with the claws

is like such a game changer.

Claw.

I'm not afraid to fry, to fry.

And I was a little, but I'm not afraid anymore.

It's popping at me.

If there's like one thing I would love for you

to take away which I think you have,

it's just that like things, when you try to do stuff

in the kitchen, things go wrong.

Just that ability to like, kind of like keep your calm,

focus on workaround, solution,

and you can kind of do anything.

Thank you so, so much.

Like seriously I definitely will be making this again.

I might look calm on the outside.

I'm screaming on the inside constantly.

Do not be fooled.