Posts tagged octopus
It’s not Paul, the octopus- Grilled octopus salad with fennel, peppers and olives
May 12th
Ce n’est pas Paul le poulpe – Salade de poulpe grillé au fenouil, poivrons et olives
Has anyone heard the story of Paul le poulpe, or Paul the octopus? Well my cousin came to visit a few months ago and he told me about this octopus story. Paul was a French octopus whose life lasted from 2008 to 2010, quite a short life…maybe that’s a lifespan for an octopus.
Paul was very famous, simply because he could predict the winner of the soccer games. He predicted 12 out of 14 games during the world cup. For French people, soccer is the national sport, getting to know in advance which team would win, and most of all getting scores from a mollusk whose destiny is to be in a pan along with tomatoes and onions, rather on TV with sports commentator, is something linked to the divine. I have no idea how an octopus could predict such scores, but it did, doesn’t this sound odd?
I have not met Paul, and I am sure he was quite a smart animal…now I have to admit that I love octopus in any form, shape and recipe. I do feel a little guilty to eat it, but when I eat it, I simply don’t think about this and I enjoy every bite of it.
Animals are amazing and teach us humility and kindness. My life changed since I had my dog and my parrot…all they want is to be with me, cuddle and eat. Maybe one day, I will buy an octopus to cuddle with, and will stop eating it, but in the meantime, I think I will still enjoy it. Doesn’t this sound cruel? I wish one day, I will stop eating any animal form…
Ingredients for 4
- 600 g octopus
- 1 fennel bulb, sliced
- 1 green bell pepper, sliced
- 1/2 red onion, sliced
- 1 cup small creamer potatoes
- 3 tbs celery leaves, chopped
- 2 tbs kalamata olives
for the vinaigrette
- 3 tbs olive oil
- zest of 1 lemon
- juice of 1 lemon
- 2 pinches paprika
- salt and pepper
Preparation
Cook octopus in water for about 2 hours or until tender. Slice in small thin pieces. Set aside in a mixing bowl. Grill fennel, peppers, onions on a skillet. Add to the octopus. Add all other ingredients and mix well.
Cook potatoes in salted water, and cook until tender, cut in half and add to the octopus.
For the vinaigrette, mix all ingredients together. Add to the octopus mixture and toss. Serve lukewarm with toasted bread.
Addicted to octopus – Chards with octopus and ginger orange dressing
Oct 26th
Accro au poulpe – Blettes et poulpe à la vinaigrette de gingembre et citron
Well after about one month of no blogging, and taking a break from it, I had to come back to my old life simply because I am starting to miss it. I apologize for disappearing this way, without really no explanation. I want to send a big thanks to everyone who sent me wonderful little message asking how I was doing. That really brightened my dark days. There are truly wonderful bloggers out there whose kindness really touched me. One more time, Merci infiniment to all of you who got in touch with me and to all of you who kept reading my old posts.
I hope no one thought I was some kind of lunatic (in French lunatique, means moody) who just disappears without leaving any trace. I felt somehow overwhelmed and unmotivated and busy with some other projects and just wanted to take a little break from the blog world.
I hope everyone out there is doing marvelously, happy and in good spirit!
I have always loved octopus, but it seems like little by little, I am really getting addicted to it. Isn’t this a weird addiction? Oh well, I think we all have a weird attachment to something in particular, don’t you think?
I got somehow inspired by the Japanese cooked spinach dish, I believe it’s called ohitashi, but here I used chards instead. Chards have a stronger flavor than spinach but I really like them with octopus. The dense octopus meat goes perfectly well with the leafy texture and flavor of the chards. The whole dish being enhanced with a citrussy and ginger dressing. This is a simple dish, with true flavors that would be perfect as a seafood tapas.
The Chinese market I go to sometimes, have cut and pre-cooked octopus, so you don’t have to buy a whole one, that is perfect for small portions.
Ingredients for 4
- 400 g octopus
- 4 bunches chards
For the vinaigrette
- 1 tsp ginger, grated
- 2 tbs olive oil
- 1 tsp shoyu
- 1 tbs orange juice
- salt and pepper
Preparation
Bring salted water to a boil in a large pot. Remove stems from chards. Add chards to boiling water. Cook for about 7 minutes, then drain and let it cool. When completely cooled, squeeze extra water with your hands and form a small oval shape ball.
Cook octopus until soft (about one and a half hours) or if you use pre-cooked octopus, just place it in boiling water and let it cook for about 15 minutes. Slice each tentacle in about 2mm thick slice and place it on top of each chard ball.
Combine all the vinaigrette ingredients together, mix well and spoon some of it on top of the octopus and around the spinach.
Nice to meet you Mexico! – Stuffed avocado with shrimp and octopus cocktail
Aug 24th
Encatada de conocerte México! – Coctel de camarónes y pulpo
Not that I am starting to deviate into Mexican cuisine, but since I just got back from Cabos San Lucas last night, I wanted to pursue my Mexican and seafood adventures with this refreshing and delicious cocktail. The abundance of avocado, seafood, lime and hot peppers is what I loved most about Mexican cuisine. I knew the traditional Mexican dishes you get in California, such as quesadilla, tacos, burritos and fajitas, but never really explored further their more delicate and fragrant cuisine.
So this small and easy dish was inspired by what I discovered in a small restaurant in La Paz right in front of the ocean, a beautiful and fresh octopus cocktail served in a glass. In France, we do use avocado shell to serve avocado based appetizers, the only problem is that you need a large haas avocado or you won’t be able to fit a lot of the stuffing. You can of course use a large cocktail glass to serve this, or two avocado halves per person.
I had never been to Mexico before this trip just because usually during the summer vacation I go back home. For many reasons, I could not go home this year. So I had to find a place close by where I felt I was completely “dépaysée” (away from my natural environment) and recharge my batteries.
Los Cabos, in Baja might not be the typical Mexican city but I loved it. You can find Starbucks and Costco which I thought were somehow out of place, selling American fruits to the locals at outrageous prices. We get Mexican mangos and they get American peaches.
La Paz was a lot more Mexican than Cabos and a lot cheaper too. The warmth and hospitality of the locals, the cuisine, the burning sun, the ocean and everything else that makes Baja very special. That long and narrow peninsula has so many wonderful assets ;its where the Pacific meets the Sea of Cortez, where the desert meets green plains, where you can relax and pamper yourself in the amazing spas, or get more adventurous and drive along the coasts and discover tiny and colorful Mexican villages.
The beach… I am not really a beach maniac, and did not lay down to get a tan, but even with a 100 sun block and in the shade, you get burnt…I was lucky enough to not have a bikini incident, so everything was perfect.
I have never met people so adorable and hospitable, people would go out of their way to help you with a genuine desire to do so and sincere smile. I will be back!
Now that I am back to real life, I will have to catch up with everyone and see what’s cooking and what everyone has been up to during this last month. I apologize for being such a terrible “supporter”, but I will get back in touch with everyone very soon.
Ingredients for 4
- 4 ripe avocados, cut in half
- 1 lemon
- 12 medium size shrimps, deshelled
- 150 g cooked octopus, cut in small pieces
- 1 tsp hot sauce
- 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tbs olive oil
- 1 tbs lime juice
- zest of 1 lime
- 1 tbs mixed herbs (cilantro, chives, tarragon, etc…)
- 1 scallion, chopped
- 1 tsp red onion, chopped
- salt and pepper
Preparation
Cook octopus for a few hours in salted boiling water. Let it cool and cut in small pieces. Saute shrimps in olive oil and add to the octopus.
Cut avocado in halves, using a teaspoon, scoop some of its flesh, leaving about 5 mm of avocado on the shell. Cut the scooped avocado in small pieces. Coat the avocado halves with lemon juice to prevent them from darkening.
In a mixing container, add all other ingredients and mix well.
Mix diced avocado with seafood, and pour vinaigrette on mixture. Spoon into the avocado halves. Decorate with lime slice and serve.
Guest post – Green tea soba noodles with baby octopus, sundried tomatoes, seaweed and olives
May 1st
Guest post – Soba au thé vert avec petits poulpes, tomates séchées, algues et olives
One of the greatest gentleman in the food blogsphere, Lazaro Bernal form Lazaro Cooks kindly requested me if I could guest post on his blog. Of course, I accepted with great enthusiasm and excitement. I think it’s an honor to be a guest post on someone’s blog. Usually, it doesn’t take me forever to find a recipe to post, but this time I wanted to find the perfect recipe that would fit Lazaro Cooks and that would be a combination of creativity, flavors, colors and that represents exactly what I love, and what Lazaro’s blog is all about.
I love all kinds of cuisines but I tend to go towards light and flavorful tastes with a Mediterranean flair. Here they’re combined with Asian flavors (because I do love Asian cuisine too, did not have the time to become an expert in it, but I do love to combine Asian ingredients to more Western ones) and the result is a perfectly balanced soba dish with amazing flavors and textures.
For this dish, I got inspired by one of Alain Ducasse‘s recipe, people who have been reading my blog, must know that I am a huge Ducasse fan. I changed a few items and twisted it around but the theme of combining Eastern and Western flavors is there and since Lazaro is a huge “connaisseur” of French cuisine, I knew he would approve my choice.
Delicious little tentacles – Tagine of octopus with mangoes
Jan 19th
Délicieuses petites tentacules – Tagine de poulpe aux mangues
From what I’ve seen and heard, I have found very few people crazy about octopus…unlike me, I love it, like every thing else that lives in an ocean. The thing with octopus is that it needs to be well cooked, and prepared the right way or it can get hard to chew, and rubbery. I have tasted an octopus carpaccio in a small restaurant in Como Lake, Italy, where the octopus was cut in paper thin slices, then marinated and topped with rucola, lemon juice and olive oil. Octopus is very popular in Mediterranean cuisine and despite its strange prehistorical aspect, has an extraordinary delicate flavor and can be prepared in many different ways.
For this recipe, you can cut the octopus in smaller pieces if you don’t like to have big chunks of tentacles in your plate. I wanted to make octopus pieces as big as the mangoes. Don’t get intimidated by this strange animal with its long legs and tentacles, you’ll be surprised by its delicacy.
I found this recipes couple of years ago on a tagine recipe book (I forgot its name, I only remember it was a purple book), the little twist is the addition of the spice mixture you can buy at some specialty counter at our Nancy’s market. You can make it as well, keep it in a air tight container and use it in fish dishes, it’s really a great mix. Every year when I come home, my mom makes this tagine for me, she knows I am crazy for octopus, the only problem is that she used a whole octopus this time, this one weighted 5 lb, so there was enough octopus for an army. How much octopus can you eat?
Cooking octopus in clay tagine pot makes it very flavorful and tender, the addition of mangoes 20 minutes before removing it from the oven adds a sweet touch that gives this dish an exquisite exotic touch. I use my tagine very often and cooking in clay pot makes a big difference in terms of flavor. I even bought another clay pot here, that will need to fit in my suitcase and arrive in San Francisco in one piece. That will be my last day challenge.
Ingredients for 4-5
- 2 lb octopus
- 1 1/2 onions, sliced
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 tsp spice mix
- 2 firm mangoes, not too ripe
- salt and pepper
Spice mix for a small jar
- 2 tbsp turmeric
- 1 tsp anise seeds
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tsp coriander seeds
- 1 tbs parsley flakes
Preparation
Clean octopus under running water, remove beak, eyes, etc…
Cook octopus in boiling water for about 30-45 minutes. Remove from water, drain and let it cool. Cut in small pieces about 1 inch thick.
Heat olive oil in your tagine, and brown onions. Add octopus, paprika, spice mix, salt and pepper. Mix well. Cook in a pre-heated oven for 1h30 hour at 375-380F. 20 minutes before removing from the oven, add mangoes, cover and cook until the mangoes are cooked but still firm and not mushy. Sprinkle with cilantro and serve with white rice, steamed potatoes or herbed quinoa.
