Squid cooking!

On Tuesday I along with some other HIF students got the chance to take a squid cooking class here in Hakodate. We made ikameshi, which is squid stuffed with rice, and ikasashimi, which is just raw squid cut up all nice. :)

First things first, we got our game faces on. And our aprons. And our bandannas.

Then we got our cutting boards and knives.

Isn't it cool that they trusted me with such an absurdly large knife?

Then we got our squid. We each got three.

Unfortunate cephalopods about to become hapless victims to our inexpert cooking skills

Then our cooking Sensei demonstrated how to properly rip a squid apart with your bare hands. :) Then he cut the not tasty part of the tentacles off and squeezed out the squid's beak, since that would be pretty unpleasant to eat.

We did the same, but I don't have any pictures of me dissecting my own squids because I didn't really want to get squid goo on my camera... We then took the tentacles and boiled them for a bit, added a bit of spice and sauce, and enjoyed. :)


Then we made ikameshi. Basically you just clean out the part you see here and then fill it with rice. The top gets closed off with a toothpick, and then the entire thing gets cooked for about an hour. (No picture of the finished product, sorry guys!)

About to boil the prepared squids. (This was Sam's reaction to my prompt "Quick, look culinary!")

Our final task was making sashimi. I first prepared my squid by threatening it with my absurdly large knife.

Credit to Caitlin for being an accomplice and taking the picture for me.

After I finished doing that, I actually set about slicing and dicing my squid the proper way. This was the final product:
Very yummy! I'm going to be a bit bummed out when I get back to the States and can't get squid so regularly...