Fritto Misto

Mixed seafood floured in semolina and fried in batches, each thing timed on its own.

Fish, Shellfish. Not vegetarian — contains fish, shellfish.

Ingredients

• 400 g squid, cleaned and cut into rings
• 300 g raw prawns, shell on
• 300 g whitebait or small fish
• 200 g fine semolina flour
• 1.5 litres sunflower oil, for deep frying, which is poured off
• flaky salt
• 2 lemons, in wedges

Method

1. Dry everything thoroughly on a cloth. Wet seafood in hot oil spits violently and steams itself pale.
2. Toss each kind SEPARATELY in semolina and shake off the loose flour. Semolina rather than plain flour: it stays gritty and crisp where flour goes soft within a minute of leaving the oil.
3. Heat the oil to 180C.
4. FRY EACH KIND SEPARATELY AND IN SMALL BATCHES. Whitebait take 90 seconds, prawns 2 minutes, squid rings 2 and a half. Thrown in together, two of the three are wrong, and squid given four minutes is rubber.
5. Let the oil come back to temperature between batches. A crowded pan drops 30 degrees and everything comes out greasy.
6. Drain on a rack, never on paper, and salt the moment each batch comes out.
7. Pour the oil off once cooled. Serve immediately with lemon.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes