“You’re not getting any presentation points for this one,” said my father as he eyed the adobong nukos (squid). “It’s… ugly.”
And so it was. And while we’re at it, I might as well tell you this, too: I suck at cooking squid. No matter how much I stick to the recipe, mine always comes out tough as rubber. The only way I can do halfway-decent squid is by breading and deep-frying, so I pretty much stick to that. How does the saying go? If at first you don’t succeed, lower your standards. That’s my line right there.
You could say I was feeling a bit adventurous, then, when yesterday I took home a fresh specimen from the market. I had no idea what to do with it, although I knew exactly what I wanted to do to it: I was going to beat the living daylights out of that cephalopod. If that bald guy from Bizarre Foods says a good battering can soften up an octopus, then it was good enough for squid that weighed a mere half-kilo. At PhP90, you have to admit it promised catharsis on the cheap, if nothing else.
Not that I did it myself. I can’t stand the stink and slime of raw squid, so the cook, who shared none of my aversions, had the honor of wielding the big spiked mallet against the butterflied creature. I had to give the squid some credit, though: it looked none the worse after the torture-by-proxy. That thing was tough, all right.
And then it was time to actually cook the fucker. I opted to do it adobo-style. No consulting recipes; look where that got me in the past. The squid was cut into bite-sized triangles and seasoned with rock salt and cracked black pepper. They were sautéed in a little oil for about 30 seconds, then removed from the pan and set aside. Into the same pan went sliced red onion, and after that had wilted a bit, minced garlic and chunky slices of finger chili (I didn’t bother to remove the seeds). Then the reserved ink was added, along with a tablespoon of water and four of soy sauce, and left to simmer until reduced by half — about 30 seconds. The squid was then added back to the pan until heated through, and that was it.
Just so you know how little hope I had for the outcome of the exercise: I didn’t even bother to taste the dish. Everybody got a good chuckle out of how butt-ugly it was, and I figured it would taste the way it looked. “What can you do?” the cook cut to the chase. “Black is black, and there’s only so much you can do about that.”
Then Pa had some of that squid and…
“This is good,” he said, turning to me. I could have sworn it came out as an incredulous whisper. “Really,” he added, just to drive home the point.
He was right about that, too: The squid was so tender it almost melted in my mouth, and the inky sauce, unsightly as it was, proved totally delicious. It was, hands-down, the best damned squid dish I ever made that I didn’t even really try to make. Life’s a bitch that way, don’t you agree?
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