Anyone ever cook with octopus? I discovered it in a restaurant and it was awesome. Grilled with chickpeas, fennel, capers, garlic, tarragon, olive oil and maybe a reduced balsamic vinegar. I know you have to beat the tar out of it to tenderize it but can you throw it right on the grill after? Anyone know if you need to boil it first in anything?? Would love any other ideas since I just bought some frozen octopus. Also, does anyone know if there is any distinguishible difference in using frozen over fresh? Thanks.

Frozen over fresh? Probably no differnce at all if well frozen and not freezer-burned.
Beating the **** out of it? Maybe this is an Italian get-out-your-aggression thing but I usually do whack a large one a bit. Tiny ones don't need the smacking.
Tradition says to boil with a cork. Science says it doesn't matter.
Place the octopus in a pot of salted water. Bring to a boil and lower the heat to a simmer. Cook until a fork pierces the flesh easily -- but not until it's mushy.
Drain and let cool until you can handle the beast. Cut into bite-sized pieces.
Great with a sauce of lemon, salt, Italian flat-leaf parsley and olive oil mixed with cubed potatoes. Serve slightly warm or at room temp.
Also excellent with grains such as farro or barley which have been cooked with some seafood stock.

[Papa]

Dear GourmetLover:

Octopus always brings warm memories of my childhood.

I caught my first octopus off the coast of the island of Paros, Greece, when I was five years old. Like anything else, it is always better to have a fresh octopus than a frozen one with which to work.

After catching the octopus, I used to clean it by taking the mouth out and by cleaning the sac. I saved the ink just in case I wanted to use it in a recipe later. I used to beat the octopus on a rock until it is was so tender that if you pulled lightly the legs the membrane that connects them would brake without applying any pressure. At this point I rubed the octopus on a rock until a foam was formed which I washed off with seawater. I repeated this process until all foaming stoped. At this point the octopus was ready for cooking.

I like octopus cooked in either of two ways. The first is a red wine sauce casserole and the second is by letting the octopus dry by hanging on a string in the strong Mediterranean sun for at least a couple of weeks. I cut it in small pieces/bite size, and I serve it with olive oil and lemon as an accompaniment to ouzo.

[logose]

Check out this excellent web site. It is very informative about the ways to prepare the octopus and it addressed all aspects of it.
http://table.mpr.org/souptonuts/fish_octopus.html

Of course, one of my favorite recipes for octopus is to boil it briefly as for sushi and slice it very thin and pour some rice wine vinegar and sugar mixture over it. Let is marinade for a while.
Of course from the other part of the world the Spanish grilled pulpo with olive oil and garlic is the tenderest octopus I ever sunk my teeth into.

[kokopuffs]

Geez, Papa, you experiences are utterly unparalleled by most chefs. I think that it would be great for you to write a cookbook.

A couple of remarks: I hear that the ink can be used in sauces. Also, would baby/smaller octopus be cooked like squid? I fry squid in olive oil for not more than about 10 seconds. Anymore cooking time toughens the meat.


[ May 31, 2001: Message edited by: kokopuffs ]

[Papa]

Dear Kokopuffs:

You are right about the ink. I love using ink to make my black "Sicilian style" pasta.

I found octopus to be more tender than squid (when prepared properly) and with more texture. While I mostly use squid as a wrapping of stuffed dishes, I also love it fried in olive oil (they have to be small squids). I do not fry octopus because it has such a wonderful texture that I feel that you will be misusing it. I highly recommend barbecuing octopus. The taste of barbecued octopus is absolutely delicious!

[elakin]

personally i have found that freezing a larger octopus helps to tenderize it. i have never tried your method, papa...but it sounds kind of fun. at the restaurant i'm working at now, we get very large octopi (maybe 5-8 pounds). they come in fresh, but we freeze them, then defrost when we need them. we blanch or steam it first, then braise it for a couple hours very slowly until it's fork tender. then we pull out the octopus, puree the braising liquid, and serve it both as a primi with pasta and as a secondi with just a big peice of octopus and the sauce.

papa i agree with you in favoring octopus over squid. it has a much more hearty, meaty texture, and takes to so many ways of cooking. i hardly ever order squid in restaurants because it's so easy to overcook and i've eaten some really tough, stringy squid. i'd love to try the air-dried octopus the way you described.

i also agree that barbecuing/grilling is the best way to go. the smoky flavor of the grill really accents the natural flavors of octopus, and you get those crispy little charred tentacle-ends....

logose, you're dead on about pulpo gallego which is traditionally a galician dish, but is pretty much widely availiable all over spain. grilled octopus sliced thin, lots and lots of garlic, spanish olive oil, lemon, and coarse grey salt. i had this at a galician bar in madrid and it was the best, melt-in-your-mouth tender octopus i have ever eaten.

[Pooh]

Thank you Logose for sharing this great website address with us. I love Lynne Rossetto Kasper!

Wow! Thanks for all your advice and the website is great. Now here's an outrageous tenderizing trick: my Greek friend who grills octopus says that he tenderizes it by putting it in the washing machine or dryer with no heat/water just lets it bang around! I don't think I'll be doing it that way but it did make me laugh. I'm going to experiemnt this weekend and let you all know how it turns out.

[Linda Smith]

Listen to Papa. Doesn't he just make you want to hop a flight to Greece?? Papa how does one "catch" an octopus? I'm not sure about Gourmetlover's friend and the washing machine...The topic has lips smacking and I predict much octopus shall be prepared this weekend.

[Mezzaluna]

Ahhh... memories of that incomparably blue Aegean! I ate my share of octopodi in Greece the month I spent there. As it was summer, it was always in a salad, with olive oil, lemon and herbs. People who say "ewww" about octopus have never tasted it. I say, if you'll eat clams, you could enjoy both squid and octopus. (We need an icon for mmmmmm, as in yummy! What ever happened to licklips?)

[Papa]

Dear Linda:

Thank you for your kind comments!

There are two ways that I know with which you can catch an octopus. Both share the same technique of detecting where the octopus is hiding. Octopuses are active during the night, while during the day they stay in a hole waiting for a crab, lobster or whatever is on that day's menu to pass by.

One way requires a tube with a glass attached to the bottom that the fishermen use in order to observe the bottom of the sea from the side of their boat. The other method is by diving or snorkling.

Octopuses are not very tidy. They constantly eat shellfish and crabs and they just throw the empty shells and carcasses in front of the hole. When a fisherman sees a concentration of these "left overs" in front of a hole, he/she knows that there is an octopus inside that hole.

In order to make the octopus come out of his hole, you need a white seagull's feather. You pass the feather in front of the hole and the octopus comes out to attack it. At that time, you either catch the octopus by hand (prefered method of any Mediterranean male trying to impress the females) or you hook the octopus with a trident. The biggest octopus that I ever caught by hand weighed close to eleven pounds. I saw the octopus resting in a metal can and I simply carried the whole can out with me. I was snorkling between the islands of Renia and Delos in the Aegean Sea.

[MikeLM]

Brings back old times. I lived on Puget Sound, across from Seattle. My neighbors taught me to skin dive, and we did a lot.

About two years after I started, Jacques Cousteau pulled into Seattle for some repairs to Calypso. He was delighted to visit Puget Sound and do some diving, he said in a TV interview, because the largest octopi in the world lived here. I like to have died! I had been swimming around with those things and didn't even know it.

Actually they're incredibly shy, and I never even saw one in the four years I was there and diving. The most common method of catching them was to take a bag of copper sulfate crystals on a stick and shove into an octopus' hiding place. They're violently sensitive to this and come shooting out. All you have to do is spear them or rassle them into a bag. I never did this, as "bluestoning" is totally illegal.

I did have a few good octopus stews while I was there, though, presumably from legally caught ones.

Mike

[Papa]

Dear MikeLM:

You too brought back more memories.

The use of copper sulfate crystals was finnally banned in Europe as well about ten years ago. The other method that was banned about twenty years ago but some "!@#!#!" still practice in the islands is fishing with dynamite. If you ever see a fisherman in the islands with one arm missing, it is a strong possibility that he was practicing dynamite fishing.