Odd Food - The Octopus
The octopus should find its way into the home far more often than it does. The reason they don’t is twofold: first, people don’t like whole animals, particularly mollusks, and second, the internet basically tells you it’s easy to cook and terrifies you about actually cooking it.
If you buy octopus, rule number one is, if it looks like it’s purple in the store it’s been cooked. Do not get this, give the person at the counter the finger, and ask them to pass it along to whoever is in charge of the seafood counter. If you can’t cook the raw animal, don’t waste the limited time you have on this planet putting it into your body.
On the upside, a frozen octopus works just fine. If you go to an Asian grocery store you can usually get some relatively small ones for $6-$10 frozen and they’re perfectly delicious. These are not babies. You will know a baby when you see one.
NOTE: If you're not sure if seafood smells fresh, get steak. This cannot be taught, and moreover, you're going to kill your whole family one day.
The first step is breaking them down. Defrost in cold water until they feel gross. That means they are ready. Sorry, that’s the best way I can describe a cold, deceased, tentacled animal.
Flip it over and go right to the middle where all the tentacles meet. That's not an anus, it's a mouth—God works in mysterious ways. There is a hole with a beak in there and it needs to come out. Take a sharp, thin-ish knife, aggressively jam it into the hole, and core it like a tiny apple. The beak looks like a brown shell, and you can feel with your finger if you got it all. Don’t worry about being rough: you have plenty of octopus.
Next. The head...
This is not gross unless you play around with it for fun and poke everything like I did. The trick here is to realize that there are three fluid sacs that need to be carefully dealt with if you want to preserve any of the head meat. I will do this in steps.
1. Cut off the eyes like you’re peeling an orange. Non negotiable.
2. Decision time. Keep the head: make a slit just above the eyes so you can get into the cavity and carefully run the knife around the inside and work everything out. I mean everything, and wash it until it’s not slimy inside. Make another slit at the top if you're not sure. Seriously, if you’ve got the courage to buy the thing and balk here, you suck.
3. Screw the head: Just cut the head off above the eyes and save the tentacles. Perfectly legitimate. It’s “nose to tail”, not “beak to goo”.
Take the little guy and beat it from snout to sucker with something heavy. Feel the tentacles before. They are somewhat squishy/firm. Beat one like it owes you less than $20, but also hasn’t returned your phone calls requesting payment. It should feel like wiggling the flap of skin between your thumb and index finger. This is correct. Do the whole thing.
NOTE: about the interior of the head. Inside are two ink sacs, some guts, and the top, squishy sack is filled with goo. You will get no ink out of your octopus worth keeping, and likely ruin it anyway squishing brains into it. On the other hand, I’m not telling you how to live your life.
Cooking
1. Fill a big stew pot with enough water to more than cover the octopi.
2. Toss in 1/2 an onion, a tbsp of black pepper, a quartered lemon, three tbsp of paprika, 8 crushed crushed garlic cloves, salt to taste, and a medium bundle of parsley or parsley stems.
3. Boil it for an hour, then toss in the octopus/octopi. If you want fancy tentacles, dip the ends a few times for 15 second intervals. Personally, I don’t care. Then cook two hours. Sorry, an octopus is a three hour affair. Fortunately it's mostly down time.
4. The purple skin is a bit fishy. It's easily removable if you don't like it.
BULLSHIT ALERT
There are a ton of recipes that call for cooking an octopus for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, and if you overcook it it gets crappy. This is all bullshit, and I don’t care how great the cook is. Cook it for two hours on the nose and it will be fine, testing a little towards the end. This is simply how long it takes to get it to—and this is the correct term—gelatinize. This does not mean “Jello”, it means “not rubber”.
A knife should go in easily, and if you bite a piece and it has noticeable tooth, back in. When it’s done, it tastes extremely edible with perhaps a very, VERY slight spring. If you aren’t sure, it’s not done.
To serve, do whatever pretty things you want. Also, you can save the broth and do things with it too. It’s pretty tasty, but has to be reduced to make it delicious. Personally, I think octopus is mild and tastes slightly like the sea, so it can take a lot. Generally speaking, it's the only seafood I've ever had where it's basically a platform for other things; I wouldn't just chow down on it. You can easily do olive oil, paprika, salt, lemon, parsley, and whatever. Be generous, and eat.
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Arts and Culture, Food: The Game Birds—An Introduction
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Arts and Culture, Food: Odd Food—The Oxtail
Arts and Culture, Food: Odd Food—My Fridge Full of Crap
Arts and Culture, Food: Odd Food—The Compost Bin
Arts and Culture, Food: Odd Food—Pig Trotter pt. 3
Arts and Culture, Food: Odd Food—Pig Trotter pt. 2
Arts and Culture, Food: Odd Food—Pig Trotter pt. 1
Arts and Culture, Food: Odd Food—Squid Ink
Arts and Culture, Food: Odd Food—The Octopus