Not quite Jacques Cousteau

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I had bought some frozen calamari (squid) a while back and decided that it was time I actually did something with them. I thawed them out and cleaned them. I have never done this before and I am sure I was horribly slow and inefficient (it took me an hour to clean 2 pounds – 907g – worth).


You begin by grasping the body and pulling out the head and guts. Then you squeeze out the guck inside and then peel off the skin (or film) on the surface. As a bonus, most of the skin comes off when you squeeze out the gunk.





Finally you need to remove the spine. This was news to me, I thought that squid did not have any hard structure (aside from the beaky mouth). It is an interesting piece, when removed, it looks exactly like a piece of transparent plastic.




Still haven’t decided what to make with it, but I will cook it tonight.




Photo credits: Richard of Forbidden Planet


[Note: today, blogger forced me to change over to the new blogger. When I logged in, I could not see any way to log on to my old blogger account. Apparently, I am one of the lucky ones to be moved over so soon.]

Comments

RennyBA said…
Hmmmm sea food - my favorite - can hardly wait for the next post and how you wanna prepare it!
February 10, 2007 7:12 PM
tin-tin said…
puhleasei love squid! so how did you cok it? yup! they have a bone :)
February 11, 2007 3:06 AM
B said…
Yes, please tell us how you prepared the squid. I personally love calamari but am not used to being so "acquainted" with my squid before eating it! :)
February 12, 2007 2:57 AM
Anonymous said…
why not make a sashimi? it looks so fresh,but it`ll be hard to pull off the skin but it will be pretty delicious :)

me,i cant log in to my beta account anymore..i cant update my foto blog there :(
February 12, 2007 2:59 AM
Mother of Invention said…
I knew new Blogger would get ya soon! It's relentless!

(I actually hate fish so I'm glad I'm not smelling it in your house, but sweet banana bread in mine!)
February 12, 2007 9:57 AM
Barbara said…
There's nothing better than lightly battered and fried calamare rings with a lot of lemon juice. Yummm....
February 12, 2007 1:10 PM
Raquel said…
Oh, fishy0fishy thing, I don't like the smell but I loooooove to eat sea foods.

After I moved to the new blogger, I don't have any problem at all. Sorry, you're having a hard time to log in.
February 12, 2007 3:13 PM
Richard said…
rennyba: I settled on something called a jambalaya – whether it was authentic, I don’t know, certainly not after I modified it.

tin-tin: I know they have a “bone” now, but I didn’t before. Pretty neat, if you ask me. I think I cooked it well.

breal: it was my first time cleaning squid. It is not really that bad – just I am pathetically slow at it.

ghee: While I love sushi and sashimi, I am not yet brave enough to make it myself. I don't know what is up with blogger.

MOI: the squid was very fresh (or at least frozen fresh), there was no fishy smell (or maybe that is just squid in general)

barbara: I agree that fried squid is nice, that is not the route I chose. I am not particularly keen on frying foods (aside from bacon).

raquel: as mentioned to MOI, there was no fishy smell.

Calamari Jambalaya (with some mods by me):

2lbs (907g) cleaned squid (calamari)
1lb (454g) tiger shrimp
1 large onion
1 medium green pepper
1/4 butter
2-3 cloves of mashed garlic
1/2 cup (125ml) red wine
1 can (19 fl oz, 561ml) diced tomatoes
1 cup rice
salt
pepper

Cut the squid into bite size pieces.
Boil the squid in salted water for 15 minutes.
When done, rinse with cold water.

Chop the onion. Chop the green pepper. Sauté in the butter with the mashed garlic. Until the vegetables are soft.

Add the squid, shrimp, wine, diced tomatoes, and rice. Season to taste (I used about 2 tsp salt and a few twists of fresh ground pepper). Mix and let sit over low heat for 25 minutes or until the rice is done. There is not a lot of liquid, so it is easy to burn things. I found I had to mix about once every 5 minutes to move rice stuck on the bottom of the pot and keep it from burning.

It was fine. I think I should have had a little more salt. Or maybe substituted chicken stock instead of salt. I think adding lemon grass or ginger might have given it a nice twist.
February 12, 2007 6:02 PM
Patience said…
I had generic fried calamari appetizer at one of the famous U.S. seafood restaurants. It was relatively dee-lish! But I forgot it didn't naturally look like that, all battered up and everything. I forgot it originally had to look like THAT! Ewwwww!

Enjoy the jambalaya!!

[new blogger isn't so bad, btw!]
February 13, 2007 8:55 AM
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