Saturday, March 26, 2011

Baked Cuttlefish

While in New York's Chinatown recently, we were walking down one of quite a few streets just looking for something unusual. We have been to four Chinatowns in the last few months, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston, in addition to New York. We found an item in a window that was a one-of-a-kind as far as we have seen. It was orange and bulbous. 
I thought it might be squid, but the tentacles at the front appeared too short. 
We walked in and asked for one of the orange items in the window. The proprietor indicated it was cuttlefish. I have tried cuttlefish once before, a rehydrated dried cuttlefish I bought in Chinatown in Los Angeles. It was not very good, but then again, I didn't really expect it to be with the way I prepared it. This cuttlefish came to our table in slices, along with some Hoisin sauce. 
It was missing the cuttlebone and any other internal parts that would have made it even more interesting. It was actually quite good. It was a tad bit rubbery, like squid and octopus usually are, but not overly so. I'm not sure what it was cooked in, the proprietor said the orange was just food coloring, but I'm not convinced, because something was added to it that gave it a nice pleasant sweetish to mildly-spicy taste. 
In the same genre as octopus and squid, I think I liked it more than any octopus I've ever eaten and it was right up there with some squid dishes I've had. Judy liked it as well, perhaps more so than I did. We ate it all. Sometimes you win some and sometimes you lose when you adventure out and try new things. This one was definitely a win. 

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