I've never cooked octopus before, much less ever tasted it. How many red-blooded Americans can say that they have? So I was excited at the opportunity to learn something new through the indirect guidance of our master chef Mario.
As I've written about before, NYC is a tough crowd to please. With so many people and so many options everyday, a chef really has his or her work cut out to draw in new diners and to keep turning the tables in their restaurant. Mario talks about this in the opening preface of the book when he states 'I like using offbeat ingredients because NYC's voracious eaters want the intellectual stimulation of trying something few of of them will cook at home'. Octopus is probably not something that will make it to the table anytime soon in your neighborhood so I think it fits the bill.
Yet, it is a sea creature, which if caught, would not have been discarded when food is scarce. It was relatively cheap to buy, only $3.19 a pound at my local butcher. And to be able to make a great dish using a scary looking or 'offbeat' ingredient palatable that few have ever come across is what, in my opinion, separates the chefs from the cooks. The bravado in saying 'Yup, we've got the only octopus in town and its on our menu, beat that!' may also have a little part to play in the growing popularity of obscure ingredients.
This was the five-pound specimen that I brought home from my local butcher.
Cute, I know. And plenty to feed a big family if you can find anyone brave enough to come over and try it. (I was not that lucky so it was just my wife and I)
The octopus was the most 'out there' ingredient in the recipe list as all of the other ingredients were readily available to me at my local Whole Foods. I know that I needed a wine cork to cook with the octopus to create 'some magical chemical reaction to make the octopus tender while retaining its leathery mouth feel' as Mario outlines in the recipe notes. Wine cork, hmm shouldn't be too hard to find one of those hanging around here.
I start by preheating the oven to 300°. I take out my Dutch oven and heat some olive oil until almost smoking and add garlic and red pepper flakes.
Next, I add the octopus to the pan and cook it on all sides over high heat until it has released its liquids, which was more that I was expecting, and has changed in color. I put in the wine cork, cover the pan with aluminum foil, and cook the octopus in the oven for about two hours.
While that's cooking, I bring some salted water up to a boil. Diced Yukon gold potatoes get added to the pot with thinly sliced red onion. These are cooked until tender but still firm and then plunged into an ice bath to halt further cooking.
I still have a little time before the octopus is ready so I make the tangerine citronette. I use a small saucepan to boil tangerine juice down with some red pepper flakes. It should be reduced by half. Now, you could juice the tangerines or do what I did and buy a bottle of fresh tangerine juice which is much easier. Your choice.
Once reduced and cooled, I add champagne vinegar to the juice with salt and pepper. I whisk olive oil into this mixture, but Mario emphasizes not to try and make it a perfectly emulsified vinaigrette, that it should be slightly 'broken'.
The octopus is finished cooking. I must admit it did make the house smell nice so let's see how it came out.
The sliced onions and potatoes get tossed with diced raw red onion, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and salt and pepper.
The potato mixture gets put on the plate. The octopus tentacles get cut and placed on the potatoes, and the citronette gets spooned around the center. Chives are the garnish here as per the recipe but aren't in the dish at all. They do go with the potatoes but if you wanted to leave them out it wouldn't be a huge loss.
Now for the moment you've all been waiting for. The tasting.
Hmmm.
Well.
The potatoes were good.
I love the citronette.
But I'm sorry the texture was just...wrong. I gave it a chance, and I can at least say that I tried it. But I won't ever eat octopus again in my life. My wife came to the same conclusion. That poor woman. I'm really shocked that she agree to try it. I give her props, but it was quickly spit out. Sorry Mario but I just think this one was over my head.
It's not the end of the world. At least I have the guanciale to look forward to which will be officially ready tomorrow. There's a few recipes that use it in the cookbook and my goal is to try and do them both simultaneously. It will require some speciality ingredients that I'll have to look for online. But I'm dying to see how it came out. Until next time...
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