Seafood salad is delicious when served with crunchy vegetables, slightly warm fish, and shellfish with their sauce.
This recipe is inspired by that of a well-known chef from Lazio, Daniele Usai, who has a wonderful restaurant in Fiumicino.

Sea Salad

  • Preparation time: 60 minutes
  • Ingredients for 6 servings
  • Difficulty: Average difficulty recipe

  • Ingredients
  • 1 carrot
  • 1 stalk of celery
  • 20 red prawns
  • 1 lb. (400 grams) of mussels
  • 1 lb. (400 grams) of clams
  • 4 small squid
  • Extra virgin olive oil to taste
  • Juice of 1/2 lemon
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • Pepper as needed
  • Thyme to taste
  1. Instructions
  2. Prepare the mussels by removing the beards and scraping the shells well. Rinse well in plenty of cold water.
  3. Prepare the clams. Throw away any broken clams. Allow the remaining clams to drain for at least three hours in very cold “sea water.” Sea water is made with 2 tablespoons of salt for every liter of or US quart of cold water and is mixed well until fully dissolved.
  4. Once the purging time is over, lightly tap every single clam on a surface or a chopping board to select the good ones from those that are only full of sand.
  5. In a pan with a clove of garlic and a ladle of water, cook the covered clams and mussels until they are open. Place them in a bowl, then place this bowl in a larger bowl filled with ice water to cool the shellfish. When they are lukewarm, shell the seafood and keep them in the cooking water, filtered by a sieve.
  6. Clean the shrimp, remove their casings.
  7. Clean the squid and cut them into very thin slices, then the separate tentacles in rows of one.
  8. Clean the vegetables and cut them into julienne strips.
  9. In a saucepan with oil, the other clove of garlic, and thyme, cook the squid tentacles over a high heat. Add a little of the mussel cooking water after a few minutes, continuing to cook.
  10. After about fifteen minutes, add the chopped head of the squid and the prawns. After a couple of minutes, add the seafood and julienne vegetables, then turn off the heat.
  11. Season the salad with oil, lemon juice, and pepper. Serve.

Tips to ensure the success of the dish:

  • Cleaning fresh squid is a simple operation, but not everyone does it correctly. Rinse the squid well under water. Detach the head and remove the clear cartilage. Remove the outer fins. Cut the final part of the head with a small knife to take a flap of skin. Pull it off completely with your hands. At this point, the part with the tentacles is cleaned. The eyes are first removed with a small knife and then the beak is removed by opening the tentacles outwards and pushing the central part. Rinse everything well.
  • In order to avoid getting too many pans dirty, I cook the clams and mussels together. I often check the mussels and remove the ones that have just opened, continuing to cook those that are still closed, in order to avoid overcooking them.
  • All cephalopods have different cooking times for the head or tentacles. Generally, the tentacles need to be cooked longer to be soft at the right point. The head, on the other hand, needs very quick cooking; otherwise it risks becoming rubbery.