Sometimes, I think my life is nothing but one long pursuit of squid.
A memory from growing up in Cyprus:
All around me, and much higher than me, the hubbub of Greek chatter. It’s late in the evening and I’m tired, but they’re Greek and haven’t even had their evening meal yet, so they’re full of energy and it’s making me even more tired. I drink my Coke, enjoying the sturdy feel of the glass bottle lip against my mouth. (I make it bubble with my straw, and get told off). The restaurant lights are muffled in cigarette smoke, but the chatter is brighter by the second. Mugs clink, squeak in sweaty hands. My stomach gurgles so loud it scares me and I wonder if I’m dying.
(Mummmmmm!).
Then, a plate of kalamari rings. And I live again.
It’s the first bite. I’ve had a lot of squid in Britain, and it’s always been a mixture of evocation and frustration – because that first bite, that first faintly rubbery, lemon-tangy squishy sinking-in of the teeth, is the only one that transports me back in time and away in space to an alternate world where fried squid rings are precisely as good as I now remember them to be.
That first bite flings me up the Royal Oak restaurant, perched in the branches of a colossal tree and accessed via a bole-wending staircase. That first bite puts a snorkel mouthpiece in my mouth and flipflop thongs between my toes. It puts me on our veranda, on our reclaimed aircraft seating turned into a bench, my feet drawn up under me, reading Lord Of The Rings for the first time and thinking how cool it would be to be a Black Rider.
Then…bite 2. That shimmeringly perfect world winks out. I’ve now got a mouthful of tasteless, pappy, insubstantial gunk – like raw tofu but without the charm. I want it to be chewier, I want it to fight me, dammit – but it breaks apart, turning to sea-tasting gruel. This isn’t what I ordered! Take it away – no, take me away. Take me somewhere that does real kalamari!
(Incidentally, when in Greece or Cyprus, don’t do this).
We all have trigger-dishes: specific foods that whisk us inward to a specific time and place so powerfully that it unfolds and swallows us whole. We sit there, motionless except for chewing, fork held in front of us like we’re hammering home a point in conversation, pupils dilated, until the spell is broken and we’re spat out into the present-day once more.
Mine’s fried squid. What’s yours?
Image: cmgramse
I love calamari. (Italian spelling? Italian restaurants are where we usually find this dish.) Maybe we get better quality here in the states, but the ones I’ve had will fight you plenty. In fact, the one time I seriously felt close to choking to death was in a restaurant with a piece of calamari that would neither continue all the way down my throat nor come back up where I could finish demolishing it.
Of course, I’ve always eaten too fast, so it was not the calamari’s fault. But, still, it was years before I attempted to eat it again. The lure eventually won me back over, though. But I now treat that dish with the respect it deserves, chewing slower and more carefully than any other thing I put in my mouth.
And enjoying it more.
I can’t think, right off hand, of any particular food that brings me back to a particular place. But calamari is one food that takes me back to a particular meal. I wish it wouldn’t, but I guess it serves as a reminder for me to be cautious.
I haven’t had it in a great long while, it’s about time that I gave it another shot. Thanks for reminding me.
Yes, it sounds like States calamari / kalamari (yep, the Italian ‘c’) is much more to my liking. It should be a little bit squeaky.
And as you say, by necessity, it’s slow food. Giving you the chance to actually taste it.
The best kalamari I’ve had in this country was at Rick Stein’s cafe. (Conversely, the meal I had in his bistro was supremely disappointing.) I also have good childhood memories of squid, from regular summers spent in Portugal. Watching it being cleaned in the market was a bit traumatising, but it didn’t stop me eating it.
In this country? You mean Italy?
So what went wrong in his bistro?
Hehehe! Oops – I keep making that mistake. No, obviously I mean England. Although Cornwall could quite legitimately be counted as yet another country, so maybe I mean somewhere else entirely.
I digress.
The bistro was, I think, hit with the problem that it’s neither the basic nor the top end of the Rick Stein empire. I found the room dark and a bit claustrophobic, and the dish that came out of the kitchen didn’t have the promised sauce with it – which was the main reason I’d ordered it. I should add that this was (crikey) maybe 8 or 10 years ago now, so it may well be different these days.
Ah. Fatal, that. I know you like a bit of sauce.
*straight face*
Sounds like it’s worth a “two strikes and you’re out” revisit. I’ll come along if you like when you’re visiting home again, and then if it’s enduringly grotty, we can both blog-blast it to smithereens. Yay for the power of online snark!
I don’t eat it so you can have mine. I do cook it when I have to, about the same as doing snails, eel, polpi, etc. I was served a plateful of those tiny ones that are breaded and cooked whole and they look up at you with black eyes from inside the crust. Mazzancole, maybe.
Anyway, the short story is you have to make them yourself if you live in York. It’s probably only going to work if it’s a sunny day in summer as well.
I don’t think I have any trigger foods, although I’d love to have enough opportunities for lobster to see if it could qualify.
Oooh, more squid for me? You’re my best friend EVER.
I’m not sure I could eat the eyes. That’s my line.
Do you eat anything else that has eyes?
Condensed milk. I saw some in a supermarket the other day and bought a can on a whim, with a vague feeling it was something my mum used to cook with when I were knee high to a grass hopper. I wondered what I could do with it and eventually found a biscuit recipe on google. As I made the biscuits with my little ‘un I dipped a finger in the can and tasted the sweet gooey ‘milk’. I was five again for a few moments. Weird.
Ahh, condensed milk. My ma liked condensed milk sandwiches, and I was force-fed them for a while.
I bet they’re really good as a dunking medium. Like milk, but sweeter. Peter Kay would approve.
Crepes with bacon, caramelized apple rings and cinnamon sugar. Just thinking about them makes me a 6 year old in my mother’s kitchen.
Good god, that sounds awesome.
You are ordered, *ordered* to make me some when you come visit just after Xmas.
Yes?
Haha, alright then. Gives me an excuse to start practicing now ^_^
Practicising?
You mean you haven’t perfected it?
Oh well, then, I may have to reconsider. I only eat the finest cuisine, the freshest ingredients, scale the loftiest heights of gastronomical technology. My body is a temple under a national heritage preservation order – nothing gets within 100 yards of it without a handwritten recommendation from a Michelin Starred chef.
However, there was bacon in there, and that changes the rules completely. I’ll eat a warm camel’s arse with a strip of bacon on it.
So don’t both practicing. You can do that when you arrive.
i can’t think of anything specific right this second but i wanted to drop in:
1. you wanted to be a black rider? really? altho, seriously, you had me at the fact that you even read LOTR.
2. great post, loved the visuals it evoked.
I ran around with a black cloak over my head pretending I was a Nazgul, yes.
Forgot eyeholes, through. Kept running into things: trees, people, Greeks carrying automatic weapons, that kind of thing. It’s remarkable I’m here at all.
(And – thank you.
)
Thanks to the Big List, I’ve been directed to this post.
At first I was more than a little disappointed by the complete blank flowing out of endless nothing when I thought about this question. I tried to force this definition of trigger-dish onto my Nana’s food; as a child, having a meal at her house was the best thing in the world and there has never, nor will there ever be, any taste like it, any food so remarkably lovely, but the definition just didn’t fit. To have Nana’s food, you have to be at Nana’s house. Whenever I have it, I’m exactly where my memory might take take me, as though every time is the same time; I’m not transported into the past, but gain a sharpened sense of being in the moment. It’s a beautiful thing and, in my opinion, a better experience than a trigger-dish provides by far. I do still want to answer your question despite this realization, and I have actually thought of a trigger-dish to call my own! Mint chocolate chip ice cream. The “chip” is crucial; it must be the mini chips and no other alternative. I remember being with my dad at Tony’s Variety, breathing in that rare and special opportunity, taking a lick and thinking that this decision was the right one; an anomaly in such a mind as this.
Well, that was fun. Thanks!
A trigger dish that sends you back into the past that bounces you back into the present? The best kind! (’Here’ is where all the best fun is to be had).
I’ve recently discovered mild fasting as a way to land myself firmly in the present, as well as really, really *taste* everything. (If I do any food blogging, I’ll be doing some of that first). And conversely, eating fatty, sludgy foods do terrible things to my concentration. Give me fish’n'chips and an open Internet connection, and I can make an evening vanish with nothing to show (except a greasy plate and a bulging Firefox History tab).