I tried to make some squid adobo today. It turned out better than my first attempt years back when I was in college. My first attempt was not edible at all. At least this time, we were able to finish it. But it’s not the fantastic squid adobo I have in mind.

What I have in mind is the squid adobo like how my mother’s side from Palawan makes it. It’s jet black with a thick sauce. So when you eat it with rice you get a kind of paella negra look. Yummy.
Good thing my mom forced me to help in the kitchen when I was younger. At least I knew which parts of the squid I needed to remove. What I couldn’t find though was the ink sac coz I wanted to separate the ink so I can mix it with the soy sauce and vinegar.
I tried to follow the recipe from this cookbook which said equal parts of vinegar to equal parts of soy sauce but when I tried tasting it I found it lacking in vinegar so I put more. My mom told me before that I should still rely on salt instead of the soy sauce to season the adobo. Soy sauce would be more for color. The next problem I encountered was the sauce didn’t thicken. I thought the ink would thicken the sauce but apparently it doesn’t or maybe because I didn’t squeeze the ink out first.
Another thing that frustrates me is I like the squid taba but for some reason when I prepare squid, it’s not taba inside but the little fishies the squid had for it’s last meal. Am I supposed to inspect each individual squid to see what’s inside it?

So there, that’s my frustration with squid adobo and squid in general.