Pharyngula::What to do with a giant squid?

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Thursday, September 29, 2005

What to do with a giant squid?

PZ Myers • 38 Comments (last page)

Cook it, of course.

"A squid of that size would feed 30 people, a whole Christmas party!" declares Aldo Zilli, famed fish chef. "You would boil it. You need the largest pot in the world. Boil it for 10 hours with lots of wine corks to tenderise the squid - and I don't mean plastic corks, I mean cork corks—then leave it in the same water for five hours to cool down. Take it out, cut it up in small pieces - you'll need a very, very, very sharp knife. Soak the tentacles separately in cold, salted water for a couple of hours, because that's where the sand is. Boil those as well; red wine is a good source of tenderising, so use a couple of bottles of chianti and leave to rest in the juice. Take it out, cut it up, then sauté in garlic and chilli and serve with coriander and a nice sauvignon blanc."
Paul Gildroy, head chef at the Magpie cafe in Whitby, purveyors of arguably the nation's finest fish and chips, agrees that a stew is your best option: "With this being a very large squid, it must be very old and quite tough," he explains. Though they are suited to younger squid, you could, he concedes, make squid rings. "But they'd be very big rings!" he cautions. "The key to the batter is to have it of double cream consistency, with a little baking powder just to lift it—it makes it nice and light and crispy."
But there's always someone ready to rain on the parade. In this case, it's Steve Hatt, London fishmonger extraordinaire. "The giant squid is poisonous, so you can't eat it," says Hatt, the spoilsport. "It has a high ammonia content—it's a totally different species to the squid that live nearer the surface." Sometimes, it seems, there are reasons why things live 450 fathoms under the sea.

That last guy makes sense, and if ever I'm in England, I'm going to avoid Zilli's and Gildroy's restaurants.

I am wondering about the sperm whale's adaptations to cope with a diet high in ammonia, though…

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Comments:

#42120: — 09/29 at 07:01 AM
Go to Zilli's. It's damn good, and the guy was only having a laugh. But don't bother unless you've just had a raise, or won the lottery or something.

#42121: — 09/29 at 07:13 AM
Great(ish) cartoon on the back of Guardian G2 today. I don't subscribe to the online version but maybe someone techier than me can link to it. It does feature a giant (cowboy) squid, but better, describes ID as 'creationism with a website'. It has Darwin and giant squid, so is very Pharyngulan.

#42123: — 09/29 at 07:30 AM
Actually that sounds good, I'm in the mood for seafood with all this talk about squids and stuff.

-----
"As with all of ID, the important thing is first to have the concept. Production can then follow as a matter of course.” -Dembski

#42125: S.T.R. — 09/29 at 08:10 AM
On the topic of eating wierd things:

I recall an article I read, in I think it was discover. Some guy decided to find out what rolly-pollies (aka pill bugs, Sow Bugs) would taste like, since they are wee little crustaceans, like tiny clawless lobsters or something.

Anyway, apparently he had a hard time getting enough "meat" out of one to eat, but when he did, he said it tastes like urine.

Atleast thats how I remember it.

#42126: — 09/29 at 08:25 AM

Anyway, apparently he had a hard time getting enough "meat" out of one to eat, but when he did, he said it tastes like urine.

Ew! How did he know it tastes like urine?

#42128: — 09/29 at 08:38 AM
All this squid stuff should be recorded and put on here as a sound file so's we could all listen to it - sort of a cephalopodcast.

[Exeunt pursued by assorted missiles]

#42129: Mrs Tilton — 09/29 at 08:40 AM
Maybe he is only having a joke, but I'm extremely suspicious of any cook who'd season squid before cooking them.

Or, for that matter, chop 'em into rings, batter and fry 'em. Sure, fun to eat, but with that sort of thing it hardly matters what's beneath the batter, does it?* Here's what to do:

-- Get rid of the guts and eyes and beak. In doing so, do not slice through the mantle lengthwise. The cat can have the guts and eyes. Use the beak to frighten small children.

-- Make a row of cuts, about 1cm apart, perpendicular to and about 3/4 of the way through the mantle.

-- Do not season, or marinate, or anything else at this point.

-- Throw on the grill. (For real authenticity, use a heavy sheet of metal over the fire. If you don't have one, a pan will do. In either case, grease sparingly with olive oil beforehand.) Cook until done, flipping once. If you've grilled them longer than 3 minutes a side, they're past done.

-- Now, and only now, give 'em a squeeze of lemon and a little salt and pepper.

And there you go, authentic calamars a la plantxa. Easy peasy, and no corks required. Leave Architeuthis to the sperm whales; ammonia is an acquired taste, and very likely one not worth acquiring.

* If you must make battered and fried squid rings -- and they are fun to eat, after all -- you should make something interesting to dip them into. I suggest a lime/chipotle/cilantro aïoli.

#42130: MBains — 09/29 at 08:41 AM
Arrrhhg! One do be wondering 't least; whose urine??? I do be hopin' she (???) was worth the sip!

Gimme dem wee squids and I be a happy pirate n that's a surety fer ye.

Arrrh!

#42131: — 09/29 at 08:43 AM
Ammonia, eh? I don't know about poisonous, but I'm not about to eat something that smells like a skid row men's room!

#42132: John Emerson — 09/29 at 08:46 AM
30 people? Seems 2 orders of magnitude off or more .

I've been told that certain sharks are full of urea, which can be neutralized by some kind of marination. Perhaps sowbugs are the same, though I couldn't imagine why.

#42133: — 09/29 at 08:52 AM
And if you're ever in Yorkshire, and in the old whaling town of Whitby (also James Cook's home port), do visit the Magpie Cafe for what I've heard is the best Fish and Chips in the UK. They have other seafood as well. But I've never been able to get near the place because of the queue!

#42134: — 09/29 at 09:21 AM
What's with the corks? How do corks tenderize? What's the science behind the idea?

#42136: Janice in GA — 09/29 at 09:28 AM
Ed beat me to the question -- do you actually boil squid with wine corks???? Jeezopete...

#42138: — 09/29 at 09:34 AM
Same cork question one more time.

I saw them do this on _Iron Chef_ too, so it's at least a somewhat widespread practice (and the cooks admitted to having no idea why or how it worked).

#42139: — 09/29 at 09:48 AM
"Soak the tentacles separately in cold, salted water for a couple of hours, because that's where the sand is."

Do we expect sand; I thought they were pelagic? The photos of the detached tentacle looked nice and clean, too.

#42141: — 09/29 at 09:54 AM
Mrs Tilton: great receipe, but I suggest a pre marinade of common cow milk for this beastie. That gets rid of ammonia most times in fish.
If you want to get rid of real urine tastes, use cloves. Essential in Steak and Kidney receipes that result in an edible end product(unless you LIKE the taste of urine, then you are on your own)

#42142: — 09/29 at 09:55 AM
"I am wondering about the sperm whale's adaptations to cope with a diet high in ammonia, though…"

Whale-sized kidneys, naturally.

The ammonia, IIRC, gives them neutral bouyancy.

#42152: — 09/29 at 10:41 AM
Supposedly cork contains tannin, which acts as a tenderizer.

#42153: Mrs Tilton — 09/29 at 10:42 AM
John Emerson,

listen to LJ if you're wondering how to get the urea out of your shark: give it a soak in the old milk bath. SOP when cooking mako, SFAIK the only shark whose meat normally finds its way onto human menus. By 'only shark', of course, I mean the only shark from the group known as (and here you must pardon my use of technical taxonomic jargon) 'big shark-looking-mofo kind of sharks'. Your smaller chondrichthyans like dogfish and skate are dished up a lot more often than many people suspect (very likely at the famed Magpie, for example), though their identity is frequently disguised behind some bland pseudonym. I don't think these creatures need pre-milking, but then I've never cooked them.

And I've never needed to worry about ammonia in the squids I cook, but then these are all small creatures (mantle lengths of 15cm at the most) who either do not do the ammonia thing or else have so little of it in their tissues that you wouldn't notice it. (But I imagine it would take very little ammonia indeed to be noticed.) Never noticed anything ammonialike in the cuttlefish or octopuses I've cooked, either. Both have tougher flesh than squid, though; in the case of the octopus, very much tougher. I've only ever cooked the very tiny kind, but recipes for larger octopuses frequently call for elaborate boilings and soakings and beatings and what not to tenderise the meat. And then, of course, there are those corks...

... a quick check on Google shows that lots of octopus recipes call for a cork in the pot. But as for the 'science' behind this, the recipes weren't so helpful. I only did a few spot checks, but the typical explanations were 'this is said to, errm, tenderise the meat... somehow...' or 'look, it's a tradition dammit' or '*sigh*, it's just one of those unexplained mysteries of the Italian cuisine' or 'no, I don't know why you're supposed to do this, but just do it.' So I could not fault our atheist host and his many atheist readers if they conclude the cork bit is less about the science than the religion of cooking octopus. One recipe, though, obviously more rationalistic than the others, claimed blandly (but without further explanation) that the octopus would be tenderised by 'enzymes in the cork'. Ah yes, of course: enzymes. Still, I'm sceptical; if corks are chock-full of enzymes powerful enough to tenderise an octopus, what on earth are the vintners thinking sticking them into my wine bottles??!!

#42154: Mrs Tilton — 09/29 at 10:46 AM
Xerxes,

does tannin act as a tenderiser, though? It has long been used in tanning leather (no pun intended, indeed 'tannin' and 'to tan' come from the same root), which would seem the very opposite of tenderising.

#42156: — 09/29 at 11:15 AM
I'll bet my collection of screw caps from the wines I drink will actually tenderize squid every bit as well as a cork.....

#42157: — 09/29 at 11:15 AM
[...] chop 'em into rings, batter and fry 'em. Sure, fun to eat, but with that sort of thing it hardly matters what's beneath the batter, does it?

You could always chop 'em into rings but then don't batter them; instead just toss them in chilli-infused olive oil and stir-fry very hot for a maximum of thirty seconds, then eat, quickly. Agreed re not salting beforehand.

But the original link in one of the squiddy posts below reminded me of what deep trawling is doing to the ocean floor. Bad. Must do some research on sustainable fisheries.

#42160: Ken Houghton — 09/29 at 11:32 AM
"The endogenous repletion of water in the sea
Lets nitrogenous excretion proceed quite easily
For ammonia though toxic is quickly washed away
So fish excrete the ammonotelic way."

as cited in this paper.

#42161: Gavin M. — 09/29 at 11:59 AM
I've found that squid is best cooked like scrambled eggs -- just until the meat goes fully opaque and tightens. Anything more is overkill. It's a swift process: Everything in the pan or on the grill at 450F or so, swirl around for roughly 45 seconds, and out. Octopus, I've had more trouble with -- although boiled octopus makes a mighty fine stock.

The trick with Architeuthis might be to slice it thinly and soak it in a vinegar-water bath, like one does with shark or skate. Wouldn't it be great to find out!

#42165: John Emerson — 09/29 at 12:24 PM
The best cephalopod I ever had was fried very fresh and very quickly in grease (lard probably). Too much frying is no good. I believe we had a pepper sauce to eat it with.

Dogfish sharks are standard for fish-n-chips, as I understand. There are dozens of fresh- and saltwater species called "dogfish", including two in Minnesota.