My local Chinese grocer--like most Chinese grocers, I'm sure--sells a product called "squid tube." It's a squid with the head, wings, guts, and tentacles removed; what's left, I guess, is the body cavity. This hunk of meat may have a couple of pieces of cartilage in it, but otherwise it's entirely edible. Here's what a bunch of them all together look like:

This is a great piece for stir frying. Cut through one side of the body cavity so you can lay the meat out flat. Then cut diagonal striations just a couple of millimeters deep about 1/2" apart across the meat; this helps it cook evenly and quickly, and it helps it curl up while cooking, which is nice for presentation (makes it easier to pick the pieces up with chopsticks, too). Finally, cut the meat into 1/2" x 1 1/2"-2" strips. Now it's ready to be stir fried. You can marinate it if you like; I didn't for this dish. If you marinate it, you needn't marinate for long; because the meat cut into such small pieces, it takes marinade quickly. 10 to 20 minutes should do it (this, BTW, is a principle common to all meats prepared for Chinese stir frying; one of the many great things about stir frying is that a dish can come together very quickly).

While a pot of jasmine rice was cooking, I heated the wok until it started to smoke. Then I added about a teaspoon of peanut oil (peanut oil is a great medium for wok cooking because it has a high smoke point; the smoke point is the temperature at which an oil starts to break down, at which point it's not much good for cooking) and swirled the wok to coat the bottom and sides. Next I added an inch cube of fresh ginger, julienned; I usually grate ginger but this meal was just for me and personally I like little ginger matchsticks in my food because I love the taste of ginger. I cooked that for about a minute, until the kitchen smelled of cooking ginger. Then I added the squid and stir fried until cooked through, which took a few minutes.

I finished this dish away from the heat with some chopped scallions and a couple of teaspoons of XO sauce. XO sauce, for those who don't know--I was until recently among you--first appeared in Hong Kong restaurants about 20 years ago (Chinese cuisine is ancient but constantly evolving); it consists of dried seafood (shrimp, scallops, fish) cooked in chili oil, onion, garlic, and other seasonings. I generally prefer to prepare my own sauces from scratch but XO sauce includes a lot of costly ingredients and jarred versions are generally considered good, so I cheated and used a store-bought version. It's quite good, pungent and a little fishy, but not in an overbearing way; it has the depth and intensity of flavor characteristic of dried meats.

The final result was pretty darn good, let me tell you. Next time you're in an Asian grocery, grab yourself a bottle of XO sauce. Dress some steamed or stir-fried greens with it, or use it to finish a seafood dish like the one described above.