Farewell To Arms

I proved many times, not always with pleasant consequences, that certain skills, once learned, always stay somewhere in our brain-warehouse, maybe hidden and dusty, but easily reached and polished: bike riding, nursing, roller blading, skiing (on this one, my body knew exactly how to move, but my muscles refused to cooperate and time after time I ended up looking more like a snowman than a ski-bunny)…

But, I was so immensely impressed by my little gray cells’ capacity to pull the long-forgotten images from one end of my spinal column or the other when I was confronted with freshly defrosted whole, not yet cleaned heap of viscous, slimy and pretty scary looking baby squid.

As soon as I reached for the refrigerator door to fetch the cephalopods, Husband left the house to go to Home Depot, because we urgently needed a replacement filter for something. Right.

I tried to get the Beasties, our 12 and 13 year old daughters, to help – the older one made faces and faked gagging, and the younger grabbed an innocent specimen, named it Cthulhu, ran around the house with it and asked if it could be her new pet (I guess it can join a dead grasshopper-pet and a potato-pet that sleep very close to her). I gave up and shooed them away. My santoku in hand I started…

Some time ago (has it been that long?) in my college junior year, my roommate’s boyfriend’s cousin Drakče came to visit us on a furlough from serving army somewhere on the Adriatic. This continental boy learned how to fish, clean, gut and eat anything that swam around, and brought some fine squid with him. A small group of friends gathered with promises of free and delicious food, but first, we had to go through a tutorial on how to clean these gross-looking things. It took some (and then some more) alcohol for fortification, but when we embarked on this voyage, we were soon mesmerized and pleasantly surprised as how easy it was. By the last one, we felt like huffy, grumpy and not-too-freshly-smelling fisherman from any Mediterranean port – proud and convinced that the next day we could look the fish monger straight in the eyes and give him a secret shake.

Over the years I kept meeting squid – fried, sauteed, grilled, stuffed, in salads, in risottos, but never again did I have to clean another one. Until today. And it all came back. I missed my friends, I missed being 20 (and no, I didn’t forget the most important part of bracing myself for the deed with a cocktail), but the end result was as spectacular and awe-inspiring as back then.

If you are afraid that the next posts are going to be tutorials on gutting the fish, killing and plucking the chickens or skinning a hog, you can relax;  apart from rinsing and de-bearding the mussels I am completely ignorant of the processes necessary to transform fully functional grazers/swimmers/fliers/waders  into neatly packaged squares available in the supermarkets.

And, no, these beauties did not go anywhere. They ended up in a nice aromatic bath of minced garlic, lemon juice, chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and olive oil, where they luxuriated for 30 minutes, while the cast iron grill pan was slowly warming up. They accepted the heat with sizzle, sunbathed for 1 minute, turned on their backs, just to get the char lines, and off they strutted into a bowl, all their own. They were accompanied by a simple pasta with sauteed onions, red peppers, salt, pepper, and hot pepper flakes – my squid like it hot and spicy! – a salad and a ramekin of marinade (I remembered to dish some up before the squid jumped in).