SQUILLA!...?

[ned]

One of these buggers came up in my son's net in Long Island Sound a couple of weeks ago and then yesterday I saw a whole mess of them in NYC's Chinatown. Tried to cook them once before, kind of treated them like shrimp or lobster, and felt the result was, well, not palatable. Anybody out there have a fondness for squilla and some technique they'd like to pass on?

[Andrew Fenton]

In Italian, they're called canocchie (or sometimes canocce). I've had them served on the half-shell as an antipasto; they're sweet like crab but firm like shrimp. I've also seen them served with pasta. Lots of recipes online (here's one, for risotto) but I've never cooked them.

[mtigges]

One of these buggers came up in my son's net in Long Island Sound a couple of weeks ago and then yesterday I saw a whole mess of them in NYC's Chinatown.  Tried to cook them once before, kind of treated them like shrimp or lobster, and felt the result was, well, not palatable.  Anybody out there have a fondness for squilla and some technique they'd like to pass on?

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I have no knowledge about these creatures at all. Except that which I just gleaned from perusing their bio at wikipedia. I think I might know why they didn't taste so good ... might want to read for yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp

[Peter Green]

Cook them?

Why cook them?

[KatieLoeb]

Ewwwwwwww.....they "evacuate" when you cook them??

Blech. Sounds like one of those things best left to a capable professional who knows how to deal with them. Like Fugu.

[Peter the eater]

Ewwwwwwww.....they "evacuate" when you cook them?? 

I think that's a reasonable thing for a creature to do given the circumstances.

Having also just read the Wiki bio, I've gone from "what the hell's a mantis shrimp?" to "ahh, yes, the remarkable mantis shrimp . . . they are neither shrimp nor mantids . . . in Cantonese cuisine they're known as pissing shrimp . . . they can break through aquarium glass with a single strike from powerful claws that they use to attack and kill prey by spearing, stunning or dismemberment . . . mantis shrimp are the only known animals with hyperspectral colour vision - considered to be the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom."

So what do they taste like as sashimi?

[Adam Balic]

They are pretty common in coastal Italy and Spain. I've just treated them like shrimp, with the caveat that the meat doesn't come out of the tail as cleanly as shrimp.

The mantis shrimp that break aquarium glass are most likely the species that have bony clubs, rather then mantid type claws.

[dockhl]

they can break through aquarium glass with a single strike from powerful claws that they use to attack and kill prey by spearing, stunning or dismemberment . . . mantis shrimp are the only known animals with hyperspectral colour vision - considered to be the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom."

Holy Crap. Why does this make me want to eat one? I must be very sick.....

[ned]

Thanks all. Somehow still slightly ambivalent about cooking the squilla again. . . did find some amazing (and some not so amazing) squilla videos on the youtube.