local seafood + my birthday.

Birthdays feel like a personal new year, yeah, that sounds accurate. In this sense I feel I want to see how I've done with my new year's resolutions, or maybe make some new ones? 
Life as a quarter-centurian has been great so far. It was a very nice long weekend filled with a visit to the Farmer's Market (where we bought some beautiful fresh jumbo shrimp and squid), plenty of cooking, even yard work (our compost will be happy). 

I'd never cleaned squid before, so Mom showed me how it's done. Squid aren't a common catch, but sometimes a few will get in the net. Mom said growing up, her family used to save them until they had enough to cook. 

First, you cut off the tentacles. You need to cut out the beak in the center, then they're good to eat as is. Next you turn over the mantle, and slice it open. Things can get messy as you clean out the insides... sometimes the ink sac releases the dark ink, which I'm thinking now, we could have saved for squid ink pasta (I've never tried that before).
Once that's cleaned out, you remove the quill, the backbone of the squid; it's also called the feather, or the pen.  

a pile of quills and a few beaks. 

Then you remove the skin of the mantle. (We did this, however, I recently heard that you don't have to remove the speckled skin).

this is what the end-product looks like. 

I found a recipe in the Williams Sonoma cookbook for fried calamari and gave it a try, they turned out nicely! 


(next post... Jumbo Shrimp)