I must admit, while calamari tastes great, the acrid smell of raw squid is enough to make the nose twitch. That's what happened when Errol and I walked into the squid dissection class and the rank little cephalopods were plopped onto our plates. This may be normal for folks into food preparation, but for us it was a first-time experience, and seeing the slimy tentacles terminating in blue-black ink emissions pooling on the plate was enough to bring up fond thoughts of eating spinach. I sat there poking the critter with some level of morbid fascination, which I think may have led to Errol's decision to briefly leave the room under the guise of a "phone call."

Our instructors graciously led us through the gruesome task of taking our squid from a fully-formed water-creature to something we could eat. In summary, our process went as follows: squeeze behind the legs to pop out the beak, pull out the esophagus, cut out the eyes, chop off the head, slice up the length of the mantle (body), yank out the pen (a piece of cartilage in the mantle that looks like a pen), scrape the guts out and peel off the fins. Simple!

After getting past the initial sensory shock, we were actually able to learn plenty of intimate facts about squid (as if slicing and prodding through their anatomy wasn't intimate enough). For example, "cephalopod," the family to which the squid belongs, means "head-footed," referring to how the creature's tentacles come out of its head. The spots along its body are "chromatophores," cells of color that enable the squid to camouflage or put on mating displays. The beak and the pen were made of chitin, a polymer derived from glucose, which commonly makes up the structure of invertebrates as well as the exoskeletons of insects. Chitin even composes our fingernails.

...And this is the part you can eat!

We cut up the mantles and dipped them and the tentacles in breading. Then we put them in the fryer and they were ready. Calamari tastes so much better when you prepared it yourself. Many thanks to the ladies at the Indian River Life Saving Station!

Written by Erik Yount. Photography by Errol Webber.