How to make
Prepare the arugula pesto by placing the arugula leaves, garlic, parmesan and both types of nuts with the olive oil in a blender. Run it on high speed for a few seconds to grind everything. How finely it will be blended, depends on how you like it - there are no strict requirements.
Add the lemon juice to the resulting pesto and season with salt, if necessary (the parmesan is salty, so be careful not to oversalt it).
Stir and refrigerate it in a tightly sealed container, until it's time to season your meal with this flavorful arugula pesto. In this case, we will use it as a company for the calamari, but since you will have some left over, you can add it to different types of pasta or salads even, diluted with more olive oil and lemon juice.
To prepare the calamari, clean them very well by pulling out and separating the tentacles and scooping out the insides from the tube with the transparent stick - backbone. To make it easier for you, you can turn the tube upside down to clean and wash it well. You don't need to peel them.
Also clean the separated tentacles by cutting and removing the two eyes with kitchen scissors.
A key point is not to wash the seafood for too long, as it will lose its flavor and essence. Second - you should strain the already rinsed calamari very well and dry them slightly. Since they themselves will release some liquid during cooking, if they are not well dried, they will release more and instead of baking, they will start to simmer in the released liquid, they will melt too much and become tough.
You can grill the calamari, either on a grill or just a grill pan. For this purpose, the temperature must be high. If you are going to cook them on the grill, brush them with olive oil and cook them briefly on both sides - until they are lightly browned, this is enough to cook them.
When baking on a grill pan, drizzle them two spoonfuls of olive oil and as soon as the temperature is high enough, place the seafood to bake first on one side for 1-2 minutes - depending on their size and then for the same amount of time on the other side.
Lightly salt the warm squid and pour the arugula pesto over them, which is diluted with more olive oil and lemon juice. If desired, you can sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper.
It is recommended to eat the seafood warm in order to be able to taste their flavor and tenderness to the maximum.
Enjoy your meal!
