“Have a wonderful day. Eat lots of squid!”
This, Victor Liquori’s heartfelt wish for his audience of about 45 awed onlookers who stood in the shade of a spreading California oak to witness one of two daily demonstrations on the fine art of eviscerating and preparing squid. “Squooshy but easy,” was one woman’s verdict, undaunted by the appearance of the glistening cephalopod, its oval, cylindrical body being dangled by a tentacle and looking startlingly like a silvery, translucent mouse.
If you think eating lots of squid precludes having a wonderful day, you would clearly have been in the minority at the Great Monterey Squid Festival, held on Saturday and Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. The fifth and most successful of these annual celebrations, this year’s event drew some 23,500 devotees of the delicacy the Italians call calamari, whose habits were described by Aristotle in his Historia Animalium sometime before 322 B.C.
Such scholarly concerns were far from the minds of the men, women and children who poured into the grassy, sun-dappled Monterey County Fairgrounds at 10 a.m. each day to breakfast, lunch, dine and snack on two tons of squid < in infinite variations: crisply fried; elegantly sauteed in olive oil with tomatoes and green peppers, then flambeed with brandy; grilled on skewers as Thai satays, Japanese teriyaki or Middle Eastern kabobs; filling empanadas, the South American pastry turnovers, and Tex-Mex burritos; marinated with hot chili peppers in Latin-American seviche; sprinkled atop pizza, pasta and the Italian deep-fried pastry here called speengies but more authentically known as sfingi; formed into “meatballs” and burgers or stirred into a creamy, vegetable-flecked chowder. And more.
Some of those who shopped the dozens of stalls where squid was being cooked and sold were recent converts to this saltwater delicacy. “I just began eating squid when I came to this fair two years ago,” said Alicia Silva, who had traveled from San Jose with her husband Joe and their children Amelia and Joseph, all gathered around a picnic table as they breakfasted on golden fried squid rings dipped in tartar sauce.
Many, especially those of Italian descent, who make up the majority of Monterey’s fishing community, were practically weaned on squid and never tire of it. Still others came because they love food fairs. “I’m heartbroken because they’ve canceled Brussels sprouts,” said Judy Packard, who had driven six hours from Canoga Park, Calif., with her husband Brad. “We’ve been to 14 fairs so far,” she said. Some of her favorites starred avocados, broccoli, artichokes and garlic.
As at all such events, the food of honor is a local product, Monterey being touted as the calamari capital of the world. Each year about 10,000 tons are harvested from Monterey Bay. About 90% of the catch is exported, mainly to Japan and Europe. Not only do such fairs publicize the product, they are also vehicles for other purposes: fund raising, profit making, good-natured flag waving and communal celebration.
Sponsored by the local Kiwanis Club, the squid festival is a fund raiser for local charities, which divide the proceeds from entry fees and the rentals of the 60 or so booths. This year, according to Bob Massaro, the manager of the event, $39,000 will be contributed to approximately 15 organizations, some of which also man their own booths to raise even more money.
Squid cookery has been a boon to the wrestling team of Monterey High School since its coach, Bill Grant, discovered the profits in this smoky fund raiser. Working the squid festival and running a $10 eat-all-you-want squid dinner in the school each December, he provides qualifying fees so his athletes can try out for various championship tournaments. “The first $6,000 is for the team,” Grant said, “then my wife and I work other outings, such as the Laguna Seca racetrack, and keep those profits for ourselves.” Roberto Dixon, a Panamanian who lives in Monterey and is one of Grant’s proteges, is being backed for a trip home to try out for his country’s Olympic team. “I’ve been working these booths for about four years,” said Dixon, now the head cook. “I first got experience tenderizing squid steaks,” he said, adding that he cannot understand why people find the squid tentacles scary. “Anyone knows that’s the best part,” he continued, quite correctly to the taste of this squid fancier.
Joseph Schultz and part of the staff from his Santa Cruz restaurant India Joze brought a stylishly funky note to the surroundings with their futuramic booth and black tank tops, to say nothing of Schultz’s battered, Indiana Jones-type fedora. Schultz describes himself as a culinary anthropologist. He has traveled the world gathering recipes and evaluating food customs, most especially in Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Greece. His lacy, crisp, fried calamari tentacles in skordalia, the Greek garlic-and-walnut sauce, sold at a great rate, as did the chili-spiced Thai marinated squid. “I have lots of other things on my menu,” Schultz explained, “but squid is a kind of totem food. Once people have eaten it, they feel as though they have made a breakthrough.”
Those not yet ready for so momentous an adventure could fill up on bright red, chili-fired Portuguese linguica sausage, oyster shooters (each a single- shelled oyster in a shot glass to be knocked back with a dash of lemon juice or cocktail sauce), assorted meat satays and hot dogs, pickled garlic, egg rolls, cookies, ice cream and chocolate-dipped strawberries, all washed down with soft drinks, beer or wine margaritas.
To rest from this heartburn-inducing ordeal, the crowd shopped for squid- marked souvenirs, such as T shirts, potholders and aprons, or for fleece boots and vests, or viewed some of the scientific exhibitions showing squid and other marine animals in various stages of development. Children could have squid (or flowers or birds) painted on their faces at one booth, and, at another, they could paint alcohol-preserved squid, then make a print of their work on white paper to take home and hang in their rooms. In the best competitive spirit, shouts of “Look at mine! Look at mine!” brought high praise from parents. Exhausted with outdoor activities, they gathered in an auditorium to watch a skit titled Billy the Squid: a Calamari Western, produced by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Eager volunteers wearing minimal white cotton tentacle costumes were cast as a school of squid. The school’s role was to appear to be a large underwater mass and thus discourage the bad-guy shark. This is apparently one of the squid’s classic defensive tactics, as is shooting its ink to hide itself.
By noon Sunday the crowd may have had its fill of calamari, for by far the most popular booth was Smokin’ Jim’s, where ribs and chicken were barbecuing in open smoke pits, then to be brushed with a brassy sweet sauce. “I wait for this fair every year because I know Jim will be here,” said a local housewife who would not give her name. “I can’t give it because I sneaked in the side gate. I didn’t want to pay an admission fee because all I want are the ribs. I’m buying extra slabs to freeze for my family.”
As the weekend drew to a close, the happiest participant probably was Cory Pina, 8, winner of a contest to name the fair’s squid mascot, henceforth to be called Cal Amore. Receiving a $500 savings bond and a family trip to Disneyland (plus $500 in cash for his school), Cory is already well financed for next year’s squid gala.
When the tired, happy and squid-sated crowd wandered toward the exit, Sharon Tucker, a cauliflower trimmer from Salinas, looked forlorn. A grandmother of five who worked the midway wearing a carrot-colored fright wig and clown’s costume, she was wistful. “I wish we could have a cauliflower fair,” she lamented. “But who would come?”
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