You should have seen the picture that Helen posted the other day! It was a shot of Tom in a restaurant, raising a cocktail that he figured he’d drink down to the last drop. It was a pretty enough looking little beverage until one’s eyes registered that it floated a layer of black squid ink on the top. Or so claimed the cocktail’s name on the menu.
It was hard to know what to think. My lip curled at the thought of drinking squid…juices, let alone squid juices in a cocktail. (I hold cocktails to a higher standard.) After all, squids themselves use their ink for defense, when they are trying to confuse their predators in order to make a clean get away. Thoughts are that it is used as a smoke screen but not enough study has been done regarding the chemical make up of their ink–whether it chemically repels some predators or plants a conflicting scent as well.
My brows furrowed as I wondered if the drink was going to kill Tom either right there or later maybe that night (in order to divert suspicion away from the unscrupulous bar keeper?!). I was a bit staggered to think about just how many cocktails must have been invented by this time in history if bartenders have felt the need to resort to adding unusual things like squid juices to their recipes.
I don’t get out much, so I never know if a thing has been trending for a while or if it is The Latest, so I decided to read up on the use of squid ink in cocktails so at least I could provide Helen with something to tell Tom’s family if the drink did indeed End him. (Hope for the best, plan for the worst!) I found plenty of reassuring information on the safe use of this sort of ‘ink’ in culinary exploits and in fact shook my head at my own stupidity after remembering that black pasta and risotto have been in common use for a very long time.
The birthplace of the original idea to use squid ink as a food or food dye, seems split between votes for Italy and votes for Japan. Both of those countries embraced the ink for its flavour (slightly salty and earthy) and colour (blue black or black blue, if preferred), and both incorporated it into an astounding variety of things. I’ve already mentioned the pasta and rice but it has also been used in other ways. Sauces, for one, most often used on fish dishes. I read that a sauce made with squid ink can be a real teeth-stainer (although the pasta is absolutely not) so don’t order it on a first date. Unless the date calls for drastic measures, of course!
I was surprised at the recipe for black bread, I’ll give you that. Who would want black bread? I also came across a suggestion that squid ink ice cream was a popular choice in Japan, and encountered a description of a pizza that replaces the tomato sauce with black squid ink. More brow furrowing and lip curls.
I began to wonder about the first person who thought to extract the ink sack from a squid or octopus and decide to eat whatever came out of it. That would have been a pretty ballsy move. Was it a dare? Was it ignorance? Was it out of the necessity to use all parts of anything they caught? What did they then DO with this new knowledge? (“Hey kids, dinner’s ready!”)
All of this led to other tangents, and the slope got a little slippery (as they do). I eventually moved along to wondering about the perseverance of the person who was able to figure out that a cashew nut (actually categorized as a seed) was edible even though it dangles from the bottom of a “cashew apple” (which looks delicious!) like something clinging to the underneath of a sheep. The shell of the seed is toxic to the touch. Toxic to the touch and yet someone STILL insisted on figuring out how to crack the seed shell without poisoning themselves and how to extract the seed. And THEN they continued to experiment until realizing that whatever came out of that toxic seed shell needed to be roasted or steamed before it was safe to eat. That shows real commitment, among other things. After all of that, they needed to convince their pals that something previously known to be poisonous, was indeed safe to eat and worth trying to acquire a taste for. Exhausting!
Those people would have probably gotten along very nicely with the folks who so badly wanted to eat a puffer fish that their pursuit of finding a way to eat one doggedly continued after what must have been an alarming first attempt. Did some guy just declare that he KNEW the puffer fish had been given to us to eat and that he was going to prove it? There wasn’t any TV back then so I would imagine that people had a greater allotment of time and self-confidence for adventures like this. Well, whatever took place, it seemed to work and the mystery was explained. These days, puffer fish are left in the hands of trained chefs who know the secrets and have actually spent hours practicing in order to serve only the non-poisonous bits. Mind you, even today there are 20 – 40 puffer fish poisonings each year in Japan, although less than a handful of those actually die. Still…
Nature has handed us a profusion of possible foods to indulge ourselves in, but somehow there is always someone who is drawn to the more questionable items at the back of the consumption shelf. Those experimenters (who probably have a dwindling number of friends) have done hours and hours of study and have cracked the code on many of Nature’s poisons for us. I can’t imagine the hours/years of testing that preceded the merchandising of squid ink as a cocktail additive before my friend Tom, with cautious (and probably slightly regretful) delight, partook of the cocktail layered with squid ink that was placed before him, but I know that it was a safe and perhaps even palatable option once it was poured. We are kept safe from ourselves by so many rules and regulations these days, that anything on a menu in pretty well any restaurant, can be trusted fully (as long as the cooking instructions have been faithfully adhered to!).
On the other hand, the Powers That Be have left us to use our own good judgement when it comes to ingesting cyanide filled apple and apricot seeds and cherry pits, assuming we’re evolved enough to spit them out without macerating and swallowing them in large quantities. I wonder if that was a bit too hopeful…