Overcoming Fears

Okay, imagine you are in the fourth grade. You are totally excited to go to the beach for a field trip on a beautiful, albeit cloudy, spring day. When you arrive at the beach, you find out that you'll be catching squids! That's a strange but exciting adventure, don't you think? The day was fun, you caught lots of squid, and climbed back on the bus. The next day, it turned out that you were dissecting those squid in science class...how do you feel now? A little upset, maybe? You go home from school that day a little bit queasy, a little bit "what just happened?", but you think all will be well tomorrow. Ya think so? Because the next day you go to class, and some of the chaperone-moms from the field trip are there, and they have calamari for snack time. Traumatized now?

by Scott Beale/Laughing Squid

I certainly was! This happened when I was in fourth grade, and to this day, I am not a fan of anything squid-related. It's not that I haven't tried it since, because I have, and I'm not sure if it's the actual texture and taste of the squid, or my memories of my first experience with squid that controls my knee-jerk reaction to shudder at the thought of eating this cephalopod, but nonetheless, it grosses me out so I avoid it at all costs. There are very few things that I have such a reaction to, but, as my husband says, "If you want to be a chef, you have to work with all ingredients!" Yea yea yea...well today, I'm overcoming one of my fears, and adding calamari to my Thai Seafood Hot Pot, a recipe from Self Magazine.

The recipe actually calls for frozen calamari rings, so I thought I was off the hook, but I couldn't FIND them at H-Mart, so I decided to visit their enormous fish department. I asked for one squid and had them briefly describe how I should clean it. I also watched a few videos online before attempting this, but it was still a lot of guesswork. I made a couple videos for you, but please know that this is the first time I've done this, and I'm not promising that I did it correctly. If you know what you are doing, and can see things I did wrong, send me a comment, because I'd love to learn from this experience!

The first thing I did was grab a hold of the head and tentacles, and kind of tug at it until it came loose, along with all of the insides. Apparently, it's quite common to see a fish in there when you pull it out, since squid eat their meals whole. I found one! (gross!) Then, washed it off and felt around a little bit to figure out what needed to be done next. I decided to cut off the fins on the sides, which allowed me access to a spot where I could start pulling the skin off.

Once it was skinned, I knew I still had to get the cartilage out of the tube, so I felt around for them. It came out in one long piece, and if you turn the sound on, you'll hear me exclaiming about that! I washed the tube and started slicing! That wasn't too hard...and not nearly as nauseating as I thought it would be.

I even tried a piece when I served the hot pot, and while I can't say that I love calamari, I might be willing to give it a fairer chance in the future. It feels good to know I conquered one of my fears tonight, and learned something new while I was at it!

Mere: 1, Squid: 0  :)