One Lucky Soul: Cooking My Catch, Finally ― Pasta with Calamari [with Video and Recipe]

Sunday 11 October 2015

Cooking My Catch, Finally ― Pasta with Calamari [with Video and Recipe]

Since I dropped then reduced red meat and chicken some years ago, seafood became the only life form to regularly consume. Fishing is a heck of a meditative activity that teaches patience like nothing else. So being on the beach by the Red Sea in Egypt these days, I thought it would be a cool idea to go fishing for squids ― like back in the days. My sister agreed to come along and we headed to the pier by sunset.

Maybe 10 minutes through, my sister caught a medium-size squid. Another 15 minutes she got another. Then finally I caught one. But we had to leave soon after because it got too windy.

We went home and cleaned them up and decided that since there wasn’t much, we should leave them in the freezer for the next day when we could hopefully catch some more. During the action, I noticed some flashes on the skin of the calamari, like some kind of Christmas lights. This was after one full hour since they were decapitated after we caught them. So I thought I would get it on film. Below is the video of this peculiar sight.

I also found other YouTube videos in which the same phenomenon is displayed.

We went again to the pier the next day, but the wind made it impossible to fish. So back home I was left with little calamari, and decided that the best way to make them would be on top of some pasta. As usual, I consulted the Internet to skim through some recipes before finally heading to the kitchen to create my own version.

What made this meal quite special is the fact that it’s the first time to cook my own catch. It is actually something I have been meaning to do for some time. During fishing trips as a teenager, I had caught some fairly-big, edible fish but there was always someone to cook them for us on the boat. As I came to find out, there is something so wild and innate, even also ancestral about the experience; it is probably why I felt somewhat happily compelled to eat those squids, since I wouldn’t want to just kill them for no purpose.

What’s noteworthy is that even though I’m here using the two terms interchangeably ― simply because I do not know which is which ― squid and calamari are two different animals; squid is cheaper and tougher while calamari, meaning ‘squid’ in Italian, is more tender and expensive. After some thorough Googling, I found that due to language differences, geographical location, and misunderstanding, more often than not squid and calamari are generally confused.
I leave you with this Link if you want to know the actual difference.

On a parallel note, here is The Difference Between Mandarin, Tangerine, and Clementine.

Back to our Recipe. Enjoy!

Start cooking pasta.

Add butter or 2 tsp. olive oil to a saucepan over medium heat.

Add chopped green onions and mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes or until onion softens. You can always substitute golden/white onions; and garlic, caper, anchovies, crushed red pepper/red chili, dry white wine, pine nuts can always be added for variety.