Never like this…

My girl loves sotong (squid)…

As a matter of fact, I seem to notice that she likes it more than prawns, never mind whether it is the seawater variety (pek hay) or our freshwater prawns (chia chui hay)/tua thow hay (big headed prawns) or udang galah in Malay. We had these very regularly way back then, cooked with egg and ginger in soy sauce…

…or masak kunyit (cooked with turmeric)…

Unlike now, it was never like this in my growing up years. I do not recall ever eating sotong at home or outside (not that we dined out a lot way back then) or on days when my dad would bring the tiffin carrier and buy food home for our meals from here. Perhaps my dad did not like its chewy and rubbery texture or perhaps, we just did not fancy it so much in our growing up years. That sure saved my mum the trouble of going through the tedious task of cleaning and preparing them.

Yes, we did get to eat the red cuttlefish whenever we had sotong kangkong (jiew hu eng chai)…

…and we so loved the ones at this Malay guy’s stall outside the Lido Cinema – he would panggang (toast) the cuttlefish over a charcoal fire and then he would hammer it till it was totally mashed and we would enjoy it dipped in his own-made chili dip. That was so good but unfortunately, there’s nobody selling that anymore – there used to be those made using machine and of course, they came nowhere near.

Fast forward to 1973, when I was in Singapore – I was renting a room at a flat in the Katong area and I would walk to a coffee shop at the junction of Telok Kurau Road and East Coast Road where there was an Indian/mamak stall. I used to buy SGD$1.00 sotong cooked in curry or whatever and they would give me so much to eat with rice. It must have been so cheap at the time but in Penang in 2011, I had to fork out RM11.00 for ONE, quite a big one, with the nasi biryani that I had. It sure is not all that cheap anymore these days, around RM20.00 a kilo at my favourite fish & seafood stall near my house.

We used to order it when eating out, what they call the salad sotong…

…or the sotong with dried chili…

…but I do not know any place here where they would cook it in that same way as my missus, with turmeric (kunyit) and asam (tamarind) along with a whole lot of other ingredients…

…and yes, we love it this way – it’s really good!

It so happened that my missus was frying some banana fritters that morning and she used a bit of the batter to fry some of the sotong…

…and yes, it turned out to be really very nice too.

We do not have anymore in the freezer now – I bought these that day for our steamboat dinner but my missus said she forgot to take them out and anyway, we had a whole lot of things already then. Needless to say, I shall be looking out for some fairly big ones at my favourite fish & seafood stall in my neighbourhood to buy and keep in our freezer so we can have these to enjoy again in days to come.