Many seafood and foods you buy in the wet markets in Hong Kong are not prepared and you need to prepare them for cooking yourself. Many foods I know how to prepare and many I don't have a clue how to prepare so I wanted to start to make a guide to cutting, chopping and preparing foods from the Asian wet markets. Hope you enjoy the posts in the coming weeks.
1. Lay squid on a cutting board. Grasp the squids head and tentacles and pull and separate from body of the squid.
2. Reach inside the mantle (the body of squid) and feel around for the hard clear plastic looking stick and pull it out.
3. Cut off tentacles as close to beak as possible (the hard beak in the centre of the tentacles).
4. Discard guts and area attached to the beak and the clear plastic bone.
5. Rinse out the body (mantle).
6. Peel skin off the body.
7. Cut off the fins on the side off the body.
8. Cut body into rings, score fins with cross hatches.
9. Remove any hard suckers from tentacles.
10. Cook rings and tentacles as desired
Nonetheless, the advantages of cutting your own calamari outnumber the horrors. For one, DIY calamari is worlds less expensive—I paid just over six dollars (six!) for five fat, whole squid that yielded me about three to four cups of finished calamari.
ReplyDeleteWhen practising this technique it is necessary to the remove the beak and quill, which is the inedible cartilidge. Make sure the squid is odourless before using - as this usually demonstrates that it is fresh.
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