The Chinese love 鱿鱼 (yóu yú), Squid. 70% of the world’s catch is landed in China. In order to satisfy the demand, fleets of boats travel all over the oceans in search of the shrinking squid populations. This naturally causes disputes and recently the Chinese agricultural ministry has announced that they will limit the amount permitted to be caught. Whether they follow up on that remains to be seen.
The squid I buy is fished in the Gulf of Tonkin area and landed in the coastal city of Beihai a short way south of me near the border with Vietnam. The city is famous for its squid and squid products. Exactly what species of squid, I’ve never been able to determine. In fact, it may be a mixture of species from the Loligi genus.
Public Domain image.
It goes by many names in English. I’m using ‘squid’ as it seems to be the oldest, but it is also known as ‘calamari’ (in various spellings), cuttlefish, pen fish etc. Of course, they aren’t fish, but cephalopods.
Here, I never let the fish sellers clean them for me. They only know one recipe and always prep the critters for that dish. There is nothing wrong with that dish (I often make it myself), but I also use it in different ways. Anyway, I like cleaning squid! Although, they occasionally surprise me.
Surprise! Squid hadn't finished dinner. Now he's my dinner.
Their preferred dish is made by removing the innards, then cutting open the body sac and scoring a cross-hatch pattern before cutting them into bite size pieces. These and the tentacles are then stir fried with garlic, ginger and chillies along with snow peas, before being dressed with soy sauce. The snow peas go in early as the squid is only fried for the briefest of times. Once it curls up, it’s done. I never order this in restaurants; it's always overcooked. The skin is edible, but is normally removed for aesthetic reasons.
Cross-hatched squid
To my eternal amsement they also do squid tentacles which they call 鱿鱼须 (yóu yú xū, literally 'squid beards').
And dinner...
Squid with snow peas
We also get baby squid which are cleaned but left whole and stir fried.
Baby Squid
I should note here that the 'salt and pepper squid' which seems to appear on so many 'Chinese' restaurant menus, I've never seen here. It may exist somewhere, but...
Also very popular is dried squid which comes in many forms. I see it as whole animals and as strips sold as snacks. Many bars will serve you some dried squid with dips as beer food. Apart from t hat it is also used to add unami to soups and hotpots etc.
Whole Dried Squid
Dried Squid Strips
Dried squid served with dips in a local bar. Top: soy sauce and fake wasabi. Bottom: Black rice vinegar.
And if you still haven't had enough:
