In retrospect the cod was child’s play, barely dipping a toe in the water of seafood. This was my first REAL challenge.
If squid had bones then I would say I tore it limb from limb with my bare hands. But because they are invertebrates - I will say that I tore it squishy bit from squishy bit.
In my bio lab in college, we dissected a squid. With a scalpel. It was clean and formaldehyde-y. This was…not.
I followed along with a youtube video as Russell held the computer up so that I could see it while hovering the squid over the sink. In this video, a Spanish chef with a comically tall chef’s hat explains that you start by reaching your fingers under the top part (the mantle) and carefully yanking out the squid’s head and digestive system. You must, he emphasizes, be careful not to burst the ink-sack because that will be a chaotic inky black mess. So I squeezed my fingers in and, with surprisingly little resistance, the head comes out. You then pull the “feather” out of the mantle.
Next, the chef explains that you need to put your fingers just behind the beak of the squid and squeeze so that it pokes out, then tear it off. At this point I’ve already torn the head off, so I am all in. The beak is harder to remove, but thankfully my time in the gym has given me excellent beak removal strength.
Now, what comes next is my least favorite bit and I am still not happy about it. The head has the tentacles attached to it. And we love to eat the tentacles. But the rest of the head is attached to all the gross innards that we don’t eat. In order to remove the tentacles from the yucky parts you have to SHOVE YOUR FINGERS INTO THE SQUIDS EYEBALLS. There is a lot of resistance because, well, no eyeball is intended to be penetrated. Once inserted, you just sorta rip the tentacles off, toss the organs, and that’s that. So easy.
You’re still not done though. The final element of squid processing is to pull the skin off of the mantle and the wings (super easy), thoroughly rinse everything, and cut it up into bits to be cooked.
We had already made the sauce, which was just some sautéed - you guessed it - red peppers & onion, plus some red pepper paste & peeled tomatoes. This sautéed mixture is immersion blended it into a homogeneous liquid. At this point we put the cut up squid into the sauce to simmer for a while. The sauce is TASTY. It takes on a really nice ocean-y flavor that mixes really well with the sweetness of the red pepper.
Despite the squid sauce having some vegetable in it, we decided it wasn’t quite enough to constitute a full serving, so we also made a dish from Aragon called ‘Escalivada’. This is just fire-roasted veggies with some salt and olive oil. We did not cook them for long enough, so we ended up eating the vegetables about 45 minutes after we had eaten and cleaned up everything else. They were good, but not like, anything special - y’know. Just some good-old roast veggies. EXCEPT that in this case you do roast everything whole. Which works great for eggplant and red peppers. It works not so great for onions. We ended up cutting up the onions and roasting them on their own after the peppers and eggplant were done.
I had made a loaf of bread earlier that day, so we ate all of everything with some fresh bread. Always an excellent choice (and is 100% as the Spanish intended).
You are far braver than I! LOVE the drawing. :)
Wow. That was an experience. I was thrown by the chicken with its head in Sg. This is very ‘next level’.