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| Squid |
After a weekend off from the fish market last week due to the girls having the flu, I managed to sneak down during an otherwise busy Saturday morning this weekend. After perusing the available seafood, which included rock fish, tuna, shark, sablefish, spider crab, box crab, California sheephead, mackerel, squid, octopus, I oped to snag a pound each of mackerel and squid.
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| Mackerel |
Long-time fan of squid. Never had mackerel. A few anticipated challenges. First, I did not know how to clean squid at the beginning of the day. Second, mackerel is thought of as a strong-flavored fish, which I have too little experience with to know if I would enjoy it.
On both accounts, I was pleasantly surprised. Cleaning small squid turned out to be extremely easy and relatively quick (a little over a minute per squid). After cleaning and cutting into bite sized pieces, I gave the squid a quick seasoning of salt and pepper and pan fried in hot olive oil for a little under a minute. The result was a salty, peppery, rich, and tender squid - a beautiful and simple dish. For the mackerel, I cleaned and gutted the fish and removed the spine and bones from one of the fish (Ingrid is very picky about bones). Then, after seasoning with salt and pepper, I stuffed them with a wedge of lemon and a bay leaf and threw them onto the grill for a few minutes on each side. Though not usually a fan of bay, I really thought the bay added a lot to this fish. I enjoyed the bay flavor where it shined and did not taste anything strong or otherwise off-putting. At just over $5.00 per lb cleaned, both the squid and mackerel are likely to have a place at our table in the future.
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| Mackerel with Lemon and Bay Leaves |
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