Calamari Di Pasta (pasta Squid)

This Instructable shows how to make pasta shaped like squid / calamari.

Ingredients:
Plain wheat flour
Eggs
Dried shrimp (optional)

I'm not going to go into the detail of making fresh pasta as there are plenty of guides elsewhere. This is one of them.

Neither am I going to tell you how to cook pasta, as that is also covered elsewhere.

The inspiration for this make was posted in the Forums by scoochmaroo _(thanks)

Combine flour and egg(s) according to the recipe you are using and work into dough as it advises.

For a seafood flavour I added some shrimp flour ^{STEP 3}

Roll the dough into a thin sheet (1-1.5mm ¹/₁₆") or use a pasta machine if you have one.

How to turn flat pasta into squid / calamari

Cut a rectangular sheet of pasta, the size is not that important as you will be trimming it.

At the bottom cut tentacles.
I used a custom-built tentacle-cutter ^{STEP 4}, but you could achieve a similar effect with a knife.
(Like a cookie-cutter, I just pressed the sharp part into the dough)

Cut two eyes above the tentacles.
I used a custom-built eye-cutter, but a cocktail-stick would serve as well.

Trim the sheet to the left and right, to give 8 tentacles, leaving a little overhang from tentacles 1 & 8 at each edge.

Wrap the sheet around a pen / pencil / spoon-handle or similar
Dampen the edges and press together to form a tube.

Hold the squid upright - using both fingers and thumbs - pinch the head to form two fins.
Trim the head into a point with scissors.

Dry the pasta squid to preserve their shape, I air dried on an obviously home-made dryer.

How to pulverise dried shrimp

It took me a while to find these, but the oriental supermarket at the bottom-end of town did stock dried shrimp.
Exported from Thailand by Bangkok Dehydrated Marine Product Co. Ltd, imported by Double Happiness Wholesale Ltd, they are 95% shrimp and 5% salt.

Crush and grind the shrimp with a pestle and mortar. You'll find they're quite tough and a bit chewy, they end up a bit "mashed" and "shredded".
Add a little flour and grind some more. Flour helps separate the shrimp shreds
After a bit of work you'll have something a bit like flour, but lumpy.
Sieve the mixture into a bowl, that which does not pass through the sieve - grind some more.
Sieve
Grind
Sieve
Grind
Eventually most or all of the shrimp will have passed through the sieve. Either decide that is enough, or repeat the sieving and grinding until it is all flour.

How to build a dough cutter that makes tentacle shapes

I used:
Aluminium alloy from a drink-can,
Some spare wood
Cocktail sticks
2-part Wilkinson cheap-o epoxy glue
A knife
A drill

I drilled a line of holes in a piece of wood, 2mm in diameter, spaced 4mm apart.
1 inch (my ruler has both scales on it) from these holes I drilled some more 2mm out of phase.

Cocktail sticks (2mm) were inserted into these holes, forming a jig with which to form the metalwork

A strip of metal was cut from a large (500ml) drink-can

The strip was wrapped-around the jig and adjusted with finger-tips to form a series of elongated 's' -es.

I then cut grooves in the other side of the wood spaced 2mm apart.

Where the strip turned 180^o I cut a recess in the wood.

With a bit of fiddling I pushed the metal strip into the grooves and secured with 2-part epoxy
(some cocktail sticks were added to improve spacing)

Pressed firmly into dough it cuts neat little tentacles.