SC - Australian Cornflour - Definitive answer?

[Lee-Gwen Booth]

Alan mcdowell wrote:

> *** Pardon the intrusion M'lady.  However, I have a pressing question; How the deuce does one clean calamari?  And is it good
> deep fried in a batter? I can obtain calamari both fresh and frozen but balked
> at all the 'eyes' and tentacles.  >laughing<
> Squeamishness from a big game hunter...go figure.

For larger squid, say, a body tube length of 6 inches or less: grasp
body tube in the non-dominant hand (if you are right-handed, grasp tube
in left hand), and the head/tentacle section in the other hand. Using
slow, steady tension, pull the head off the rest of the body, and most
of the entrails will come away with it.

Stick your finger into the body tube and scrape out any remaining
entrails, sand, if any, and make sure to loosen and remove the clear
plastic-y-looking bone. It looks like something in between a piece of
cellophane and a clear polished ladies' long fingernail, running pretty
much the length of the body.

For larger squid you'll want to remove the purplish skin; rubbing a
little coarse salt over the squid will help scrape it away, or just peel
it away with your fingers. You may want to pull off the tail fins --
these run along the rear half (actually the front half, when the squid
is swimming) of the body tube, and can be a bit tough, but are easily
removed by simply pulling them off. With smaller squid you may feel okay
about leaving the skin and fins in place, but skinning them makes for a
more attractive, white seafood.

Cut the tentacle/mouth section off the head, between the eyes and the
tentacles. You may or may not want to get insane and retreive the two
ink pouches from the entrail mass behind the head (these will be the
dark black masses which are clearly not eyes). The ink is good in tomato
sauces used to cook the squid, rolled into fresh pasta dough, and
various other uses, including, perhaps, calligrapher's ink. You may want
to clean and skin the tentacles with more coarse salt and a little
patience. It is the favorite part for most squid lovers, it seems, but
the larger suction cups on the tentacles can, on larger specimens, have
little suction cup bones made of the same stuff the backbone is made of,
in little rings fitting inside the suction cups. I just run my
fingernail along the inside of each tentacle to remove these, and don't
bother skinning anything but the body tubes.

Yes, they can be battered and fried, although I much prefer a simple
seasoned flour dusting for most European-style fried squid dishes,
including the basic Southern Italian calamari fritte marinara. My
favorite Asian-type fried squid dish involves either a dusting of rice
flour or a rice flour or wheat starch batter, frying it, and quickly
sauteeing it with roasted five-spice salt and chopped green chillies.

Most of the squid sold in the USA seems to be frozen, including the
stuff thawed and the  sold as fresh in the fish markets. Unlike a lot of
other seafoods, though, it seems to suffer relatively little from this
treatment. I find this odd because there are loliga squid swimming
visibly in the waters off New York City and Long Island, but we mostly
get frozen squid from Indonesia. You can, BTW, pay somewhat more premium
prices to get frozen and, theoretically, cleaned and skinned squid, and
it does indeed contain somewhat less, ounce for ounce, guts, skin, and
bones. It just is not entirely free of them. Usually it's a time-saver
and makes for a much more pleasant trash bag after cooking, but you
still have to givce them a quick once-over.

Adamantius  
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com