octopus

[judy]

One of our customers has just got a licence to catch octopus commercially off our coast. He is hungry for new ideas on preparation and recipes. Any ideas to add to the few I have managed to give him would be encouraging.

[Kimmie]

Hello Judy,

Link for Octopus Recipes

By coincidence we opened up this part of the forum to post a question about tenderising such things as Calamari, Squid and Octopus.

Recently we were told by a guest who is a Chef, that she uses fruits such as Pawpaw and Kiwifruit as tenderisers for Squid. We tried it last BBQ night when we do Arrow Squid on the Barbie. We blended kiwifruit with a bamix gently (or you get ground seeds that are had to removed), sieved the puree and mixed it with fish sauce and the juice of one lime and marinated the squid (5 units)in it all day. Mixed it with olive oil before cooking. The result was excellent, much more tender than using our traditional lemon juice.

Does anyone else have any suggestions for tenderising such creatures ?

Last night we had a Pasta evening and as one of the toppings we did some baby octopus stir fried in a wok with lemon, garlic & XV olive oil. We did a kiwifruit marinate and it worked well, perhaps a bit too well as the octopus melted in the mouth. Instead of marinating it all day we might try it for two hours next time. It was nice but we like to retain some of the "al dente" like texture of such seafood.

[pompeyams]

Near me is the sea and at certain times of the year we are inundated with squid and cuttle fish but none of the locals ever use it so I thought I should put cuttle fish on the menu to see how it sells I used a recipe I have for squid thats a bit different from the norm of pan or deep frying it what I did was to wash the cuttle fish messy job trying to save as much ink as possible once cleaned and ready braise for approx 3 hrs in the ink with red wine a touch of tomato paste (brings out the black colour )and fish stock then pass the sauce reduce and add the cuttle fish back to the sauce HEAVEN and stunning looking

I like to steam it for a hour or so, then bash it some and pickle it in white wine vinegar, sugar, garlic and chillies.

[judy]

thank you for your ideas. Pompeyams I saw a very similar recipe on a Rick Steen program and tried it, beautiful. What part of England are you? Found a recipe the other day marinating with garlic, olive oil and chopped tomato. Tomato doing the same job as the kiwi fruit I guess.Also states that in Greece it is dried in the sun before cooking. If I can come up with a way to curb the great aussie fly I'll give that a try too.
Alfa, visit here and you can try it

[Nick.Shu]

i used to use a marinade of:

sweet chilli
lemon juice
garlic
olive oil
corriander


of course the citrus will "cook out" the octopus to a certain extent, but this seems to be a popular dish - especially chargrilled.