Damien Enright: Calamari or kalamari tastes great however you spell it

The other evening I saw a Donegal woman on TV demonstrate the slicing and cooking of squid for a TV chef who, upon tasting the results after they'd spent 30 seconds in a deep fat fryer, declared them the most delicious squid he'd ever eaten, including in Gallica, northern Spain, legendary home of fish cooking.

I was glad to see a demonstration of how fried squid need no longer taste like rubber bands. Like the TV chef, the affable Neven Maguire, I too have eaten squid overseas, indeed transglobally. Once, in the early 1960s, I even went on a night squid-fishing boat out of Ibiza town and manned the flame on the massive carbon kleig light that attracted the squid to the net. "Cuidado, Damián!" yelled the boatman, before I set fire to the boat.