Got Some Squid?

Hello and how is everyone doing this mid-July? I know we’re all deep into our summer funtimes, but you know, autumn is just around the corner. And the cooler temps mean that we start traveling again, yay! I never do any trips in the hot summer months, when places are mobbed and people are miserable. Oh no, I wait until the shoulder season to take advantage of better weather and quieter places. Our upcoming trips include 🇫🇷 Burgundy and Bordeaux (with optional Champagne add-on) in October, 🇲🇽 Mexico City in April and 🇮🇹 Puglia and Campania (that’s Italy) in May!! And we’re starting the planning for a return to South Korea in late September of 2026, too! 🇰🇷 🇰🇷 🇰🇷

Our France trip is nearly sold out, but we do have one double and one single room left. If you book by the end of July you can take $250 off the price per person! And, whoever books those last two rooms get a FREE one-year paid subscription to this very newsletter, The Chefsmartypants Academy! (or a one-year extension of an existing subscription) What a deal! If I weren’t the one running the trips and writing the newsletter, I’d take advantage of it!

So hop to it, people. Come to France with me in October when the weather is cool, the mustard fields are golden, the grapes are ripe and crushing and the food is fab. Merci!

Also, just to remind everyone…I will be hosting a free, online class sometime in August (all depending on when I can move back into my apartment) and all you paid subscribers are welcome to join! New paid subscribers or upgrades from free can also join, if you do so by the end of July. What are you waiting for?

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Just salad it. That’s my new, one line direction for all foods. Just salad it. Salad as a verb, as an action word, as a call to arms. To salad, is to exist. You all know Netanya, the silent, enigmatic presence behind the camera in all my content? Well, she is actually teaching a class this summer called “How To Salad” It was her idea and it’s sold out! See? It’s a hot, hot term this year! You can salad anything, with a little imagination and some good olive oil.

Squid salads exceptionally well, with a whole lot of room for improvisation and jazz-hands-ing. The flavor of squid is pretty low-key, it’s not a definitively ocean-y flavor like a clam, which taste like fresh seawater and iodine (in a good way), or sweet like shrimp, it’s more neutral, I think. More about texture in a way than flavor. I mean, it has flavor, especially when it’s very fresh, but it isn’t an assertive flavor, or a definitive one like lobster. It’s more the chameleon of the sea, a shape-shifter that adapts to whatever surrounds it. Seafoody, but vague. I’d maybe venture to say it’s like the chicken breast of the cephalopods, but that’s giving it very short shrift. Chicken breast if boring. Squid is exciting and dynamic. And what other sea creature can adapt to being cooked in a flash, or taking its long, sweet time? Squid swings both ways.