Dancing squid bowl: Could you eat this? (Yes, it's what you think and yes, there's a video)

The Herald Sun (Australia) ^ | July 22, 2011 | Staff

[Stoat]

TAKE one squid, cut off its head and watch the rest dance on a bed of rice and salmon roe. Eat. Or not.

This Japanese delicacy known as odori-don or “dancing squid rice bowl” is a variation on traditional squid sashimi and uses soy sauce to create the disturbing illusion of bringing a dead squid back to life.

YouTube user Richard Fan shot the above video on a visit to Hokkaido’s Ikkatei Tabiji restaurant and explains that sodium in the soy causes neurons to fire, making the muscles twitch.

The dish comes with the head cut into small sashimi slices and the rest joins as a side plate once the “performance” is complete.

Mr Fan said the squid was completely motionless before the sauce was poured on and was definitely “dead at the time of serving”.

This controversial method of preparing sashimi while it’s still alive is known as ikizukuri, and is banned in Australia.

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[headsonpikes]

Sashimi is great, but when it comes to squid, I prefer Szechuan-style spicy fried with minced hot pepper.

Unfortunately, I’m a day’s drive from Vancouver.

[Skooz]

I agree 1000%.

[ken5050]

And if the squid came from the waters off the reactor in the tsunami, not only will it “dance” but it will “glow in the dark”

[exDemMom]

And yes, I know the squid was quickly killed by having its head removed, but how do we know the body is not still feeling the pain, or the head feeling phantom pain?

I would not worry too much about the body still feeling pain; perception of pain is modulated through the brain.

Chopping up the head while it is still alive, though... I don't know. I don't remember how large the squid brain is, or where it is, but if it is not destroyed rapidly by the act of cutting, then there is a potential of suffering.

[Oatka]

I don’t eat bait.

[tanuki]

LOL! Oh well, live and learn....

[Scoutmaster]

IIRC, that French delicacy is an “ortolan”, smaller than a sparrow, and eaten whole while one wears a napkin over one’s head.

Ah. The Ortolan Bunting. Francois Mitterrand's last, and highly illegal, meal.

Ortolans are an endangered species. A tiny songbird about the size of your thumb.

My introduction to them was in an Anthony Bourdain book, in which he and a few famous chefs were invited to dine (illegally) on Ortolan in the company of another famous chef in New York.

According to this NPR audio bite and transcript, Ortolan is prepared by drowning it alive in Armagnac. It is then cooked, plucked, and then served whole, and eaten bones, head, and all.

"People typically will eat it under a white napkin. And part of it is to create a little capsule for yourself so that all of the aromas and tastes are captured in the space before you. But also people traditionally ate beneath the cloth napkin because they didn't want to have God see them eating these little songbirds."

After Mitterrand ate his Ortolan, he didn't have anything else to eat for the remaining ten days of his life.

[isom35]

Riker ate something like that with Klingons once. Gagh?

[RichInOC]

That’s just made of awesome.

[elcid1970]

I first heard of Anthony Bourdain when he did a culinary travelogue of Uzbekistan, where I was deployed 2003-04. I only got to travel outside our compound in Karshi-Khanabad twice, to the ancient city of Samarqand. He sampled the food, attended an Uzbek wedding, and made the point that the further Uzbekistan goes from its secular Soviet days, the closer it moves toward Islamicization.

The lovely young Uzbek women I spoke with didn’t give a rip about Islam and dressed accordingly for the 100 plus degree weather; midriff-baring tops were not uncommon. They regarded Afghans as primitive woman-hating savages.

Turns out they were right. Been that way for centuries.

[Stoat]

The lovely young Uzbek women I spoke with didn’t give a rip about Islam and dressed accordingly for the 100 plus degree weather; midriff-baring tops were not uncommon. They regarded Afghans as primitive woman-hating savages.

 

Given that Free Republic is regarded by many, including myself, as an educational site, I felt that your captivating description of an incredibly important element of the local Uzbek population might be enhanced  and therefore made even more academically valid, by providing some additional photographic information pertaining to your essential post.  Although some may have different approaches, I have never been a "stay on topic!" fascist, demanding, for example that 'all' posts in a given thread be closely related to the original post.  I believe very strongly that Free Republic has among its membership some of the most brilliant folks on the planet, and so to arbirarily force them into some artificial set of intellectual parameters deprives everyone of the wisdom that they may be able to provide.  Therefore, I took it upon myself to seek out examples of the specific Uzbek population that you refer to in an effort to expand upon what is obviously a vital topic, and by providing a particularly verbose and grindingly tedious introduction to my post I'm hoping that any lurking "stay on topic!" fascists might be fooled into forgetting entirely what this thread was originally about.  That being accomplished, may I present Sofiko Kanto, Miss Uzbekistan Asia Pacific 2011

http://shinymeteor.blogspot.com/2011/02/miss-asia-pacific-2011-contestant-miss_3232.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[elcid1970]

Ani ochen prekrasnaye! Spasibo bolshoya!

Uzbeks of course are Turkic, not Asiatic. Those large uptilted round eyes are their trademark.

What I found in Uzbekistan was that nationality trumps ethnicity. There would have been profound ethnic mixing in a land that lies along the Silk Road, let alone a pathway for many conquerors in centuries past. One young Uzbechka insisted that blond hair and fair features among Uzbeks were a legacy of the time of “Aleksandr Makedonskii”. Naturally I felt such features are of much more recent vintage. When I asked the young woman giving me a haircut if she were Russian (blond hair & blue eyes), she quickly responded that she was Uzbek born and raised, never mind where her parents came from.

Anyway, thanks for the photos and for the reminder that on this website we FReepers find ourselves in intelligent company.