Bottled Squid/Cuttlefish Ink

Some good friends were among our guests the second time I attempted Arroz Negro and it still turned out grey rather than black. These are the kind of friends I don’t mind using as guinea pigs or experimenting with new food/recipes…typically, I don’t have guests when I am working on a dish I haven’t gotten right or am trying for the first time. We have a wonderful symbiotic relationship with these friends…they often bring us wonderful and thoughtful food gifts from around the planet and we feed them in return…seems like a fair deal, no? At any rate, a few weeks after the second Arroz Negro episode, this stunning bottle showed up at our house while I was away… OMIGOSH! A whopping humongous bottle of concentrated and bottled squid ink. It’s the stuff of Arroz Negro miracles. I had given up on trying to do this the all-natural way since I was having issues with the amount of lumot and the way I handled the ink… Besides, two Spaniards themselves told me to just use the bloody or should I say inky ink from the sachets or bottle instead of the fresh ink!

The joy of receiving such a useful present, and the outrageous size of it, brought a huge smile to our faces (Mrs. Marketman is a big Arroz Negro fan as well). Our friends may not have realized that you only need say 20-30 grams of ink for a small paella so sending over 500 grams is like getting a pint of caviar!!! In fact, when they heard about the successful third attempt in my previous post, and they were not at that lunch, they were worried that I had used up the whole bottle and there would be no more left for them… We promised them an Arroz Negro soon and still we would have enough ink for months to come! For those who are curious, this squid ink was apparently purchased at Terry’s Selection on Pasong Tamo. It is available in much smaller sachets and bottles and this bottle in the photo is the largest size that they sell.