I love squid and octopus. They are like if you took the essence of shrimp, put
it in some tinfoil and inhaled the vapors through a hollowed out Bic pen heated
up by a lighter. (And it had eaten heroin before it died.) They are both best
cooked only a little or for a long time because in between is rubber band city.
Real Thai cooks have wonderful ways to cook Calamari, scoring the flesh squares
on one side in a diamond pattern so it curls up like a jewel. With this
texture it can hold the curry close to its milky flesh, trapped in the ridges
created. It isn't hard but makes a big hit at the table.
They might have some clever Ted Bundy intelligence in them. But it is all for
the purposes of killing and eating their fellow marine neighbors. They would
eat a mermaid's face off in a flash, without thinking of her as a divine
version of fishy chastity despite her voluptuous upper deck. They would gobble
her down like I eat every one of these little miscreants who falls onto my
plate. With a spray of lime at the last second. Always a spray of lime to
mark their passing.
I don't get my hand on the tiny octopus that the Japanese eat so raw that
occasionally one chokes a diner to death when swallowed in Jeffrey Dahmer (did
you also think his last name had an L in it? I sure did.) fashion, their
tentacles gripping the inner esophagus and choking the gourmand out of his next
exotic meal. I can't say which side I fall in this kind of struggle, I mean
chewing a living creature so poorly seems like such a dickish move doesn't it?
I mean does it reallyaffect the flavor to scald the thing before mastication?
Really? That is the most important part of the flavor, that the creature
fights you while chewing? I love food but count me out for that ritual. Kill
the thing, maybe RIGHT before I eat it like I do with soft shell crabs from
Maryland's Chesapeake Bay. That is cool. I taste the whole bay in every bite
when I do that.
But for God's sake (liberal phrasing I know) kill the creature.My teeth are not
so good at that as a blast in the steam tray, OK? I don't need to feel its
objection to its own death in the same fleshy area I kiss my girlfriend with.
That tongue is a sacred area and not meant for a sacrificial alter. It is meant
for loving and for accepting all the members of the family of squid and octopi
after they have been properly dispatched, and can now deliver the essence of
the ocean to my palate.
I love those creatures, but I don't trust them for a second. I have cleaned
them of their parrot-like beaks and I know that if the tide was turned, I would
be dispatched without the artistic grace of some fish sauce, lime, garlic and
chili. They would eat me alive.
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Yifu" <yifuxero@...> wrote:
>
> My Philippina friends gave me some squid for lunch today, so I'm posting this
> to memorialize the event. I wouldn't make a habit of eating the creatures.
> They asked me if I liked squid, and I said "As long as it's dead".
> ...
> It turns out that squid, cuttlefish, and octopi are highly intelligent
> animals, ranking right up there with the higher primates in problem solving.
> That octopus that predicted sports events unfortunately died. I can feature
> a big tanks in the Vegas Hotels geared up to make predictions.
>
> http://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/brian_mccarty_squid.jpg
>
