Squid (shoop-shoop)

Many, many moons ago I fell in with a group of gamblers. There is no other way to describe the company — they were, to a man (and woman), ardent devotees of St. Cayetano (or would have been, had they known who he was). Most were professional gamblers, some were professionals who gambled, and the rest worked in the (illegal) gambling trade. If it involved a bet, they were in on it.

I don’t gamble, myself. I do, however, live in a small city with limited venues in which to engage a certain passion, so that sooner or later you are bound to end up in the same place with everyone else who happens to lean that way. That is a convoluted way of saying that 1) I love my booze; 2) I hate loud music; 3) back then, there was only one bar around (since closed) that respected my sentiment re #2; and 4) the gamblers (apparently) felt the same, and there we were. It didn’t hurt that the guy who ran the place hated Kenny G even more than I did. He lost me on Tuesdays, though. That was karaoke night (see #2 again).

In case you’re wondering what all that has got to do with squid, let me tell you now that it doesn’t. Nothing as straightforward as that, anyway. You see, one time we were having stewed bihag with our San Miguel (bihag, if you don’t know, is the cock/rooster that lost the fight, its meat rendered tough by a lifetime regimen of steroids), and even though I’m not really into chicken (or like to say so, at any rate), I made a show of taking a hearty sip of the broth.

One sugarol mistook this for interest. “Krish-toper,” he volunteered, “do you know what thish shoup needsh?” I don’t remember if he was inebriated on this particular occasion; let’s just say he had a problem with sibilants independent of blood alcohol level.

I thought, How about an attending gastroenterologist? (I wasn’t being sarcastic — indigestion is a common complaint when it comes to bihag.)

“Shquid,” he said. “Dried shquid.”

Okay, here’s one other thing: I wasn’t always into cooking. Wasn’t even into eating then, if you know what I mean. Besides, I’m wary of “Do/did you know” as a conversational preface, especially in settings where intoxicants are imbibed or inhaled (or both), where aforementioned preface is followed by a claim that is a) patently absurd (“I was kidnapped by elves.”); b) probably factual, but who cares? (“Derek Ramsay was my sister’s ex-boyfriend’s cousin’s lab partner in high-school chemistry.”); c) unverifiable (“My grandfather made the best adobo. You could ask my mother, but she’s dead, too.”); or d) a combination of the above (“Lolo got his adobo recipe from the elves who abducted him. That’s why it was the best. Even Derek Ramsay said so.”). Like, uh-hnh. Dried squid? In soup? Please.

Fast-forward to a Sunday about a decade hence, with me nursing a hangover, staring glassy-eyed at a bowl of soup. I don’t know how you deal with a hangover, but mine doesn’t involve food. Everything tastes like chalk the morning after a vigorous drinking session. There is an old wives’ tale that says the best way to cure a hangover is to drink again (no shit), like fighting fire with fire, the alcohol in theory cancelling each other out. All it did was render me comatose for the rest of the day. Now that I think of it, a more apt parallel would be to make a drowning survivor drink more water.

Anyway, there I was, mooning over that soup, when it came to me, unbidden (and minus the lisp): dried squid! Well,what was the harm? Some people spend their free time building incendiary devices in their basements; why couldn’t I pass mine vetting drunken advice? (That, of course, entailed that I wasn’t hammered enough to recall said advice the next morning — if at all — and correctly at that. Still, every hobby wasn’t without its challenges.)

But I’m digressing all over the place. And no, I haven’t had a drop to drink — yet. Dried squid in soup? Go ahead, it’s sound advice. Even better, fry it first. The same stink that permeates your kitchen will infuse your broth with a rich, deep umami taste and a slightly nutty aroma that really perk up the dish sans the squid making a spectacle of itself (unless, of course, you leave it in; please ignore the photos above). One piece of dried squid will do quite nicely, but feel free to add more according to your taste. Works with any meat-based soup. A great restorative too, if reports are to be believed, but don’t look to me for confirmation on that one. I prefer to sleep my hangovers off. There’s no betting against that.