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The hibiscus flower has bloomed, day 1

Okay, full confession? I've never watched Squid Game. Never even really felt the desire to. Just doesn't sound like my kind of thing. Different strokes for different folks and all that shit. However, unlike some people, I'll eat some fucking squid. Different strokes, after all.
Now, I've eaten quite a bit of calamari in my day, and I've maybe eaten squid a time or two with a different preparation, but, if I have, I don't really remember much about it. However, I did buy some squid on a whim at a local market and decided that 4th of July's long weekend was the perfect time to start experimenting with it.
First off, I learned a lot about squid biology via some hands-on experience. While my original intention was to do everything blind and figure it out for myself, I decided to go ahead and Google an anatomical diagram so I wouldn't kill myself accidentally. I spent quite a bit of time with the knife cutting the two squid up and sorting out the edible parts. My kitchen smelled like a bait shop for a little while. Good times.
After enough dicking around, I had cleaned and sorted the squid onto two plates: tentacles and other not tentacle shit. I don't know what it's supposed to be called. I decided that, for my first experiment, I'd be going with some of the not tentacles.
To keep it simple, I just salted two pieces and dusted the second piece with some oat flour. I then pan fried those pieces in olive oil. Gotta start simple and see what happens.
The first thing I learned: squid cooks fucking fast. Like, ludicrously fast. The second thing I learned: squid has enough flavor on its own that you don't have to season it a whole lot unless you're just wanting to change the flavor dramatically. 
My second experiment involved battering and frying the tentacles. Basic shit, I know, but I was trying out some ideas. I noticed while snacking on the first experiment that a little citrus would do well to accentuate the squid flavor. However, I only had a bottle of orange juice and didn't want to dick around with that, so I decided to use some Sauvignon Blanc, which has a little bit of citrus in its flavor profile, flour, salt, and cayenne for my batter mixture.
My first attempt did not go well. As I was still pan frying, I ran into a few extra hiccups: the squid cooked before the batter, which meant that the breading never really ended up right. Beyond that, the batter would not really stick to the squid at all. That shit is slick. There was a little bit that stuck in with the tentacles, however, so I did get to have that flavor combination, and it was fucking fire. 
To try to get the batter to stick better, I dredged some more of the tentacles in flour, then dunked it in batter, then recovered it in flour, and got it cooking. This attempt did work better, but, due to still frying in a pan, I didn't get all of the batter entirely cooked, so it still wasn't perfect. However, the parts of the batter that did cook were amazing. I knew that this combo would be something to play with a bit more moving forward.
These were all of the experiments for Day 1, but fret not, dear reader: I had a few more days to commit more fuckery.
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