Well not really, thank goodness! Actually, more like dreaming about the fishes. Generally, when we purvey seafood from Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, we pullout all the stops. Take a look at our last trip to one of the best seafood markets around: Randazzo’s Fish Market.
We have fresh shucked clams, tiger shrimp, 4 pounds of baby octopus, half a pound of smoked Nova Scotia salmon, 1 pound salted anchovies, a pound-and-a-half Alaskan halibut, two pounds medium sized seppia, and one large octopus. (Tucked away in the refrigerator was a dozen Hama-Hama oysters, a dozen Kumamoto oysters, 3 jars of Willapoint oysters for my Christmas dinner amuse-bouche, two pounds of sturgeon, and a whole Arctic char. Yeah, you guessed it: this was to be Christmas dinner … some assembly required.
To get into all the menu items for Christmas dinner would be too long for this post so I’m going to focus on the octopuses or octopi, if you prefer. Now at 2Gourmaniacs we’ve had a lot of trials and tribulations with octopus: the challenge is how to render an octopus that is tender, flavorful, and definitely not rubbery or overly chewy. There are two schools of thought on how cook a tender octopus. The first is to bash the creature to smithereens and quickly boil it for several minutes. Althoug I’ve always enjoyed the bashing part, I’ve never had much luck with a quick boiling to produce a tender octopus. Hence the second school of thought. Omit the bashing (darn) and slow cook the cephalopod either in water or in a slow oven or a combination of both. (Years ago, one afternoon when my son, Alex, came home from school he wanted to know if that was an octopus in the sink and, if so, why I was rubbing it. Good question Alex! The Japanese recommend massaging octopus with grated daikon to remove the skin and to tenderize it. It works well in removing the skin, but after massaging and boiling it, I couldn’t find any real measure of increased tenderness.)
So I’m going to talk about my baby octopuses (by the way, Rosaria was able to tenderize her regulation size octopus by cooking it for about 2 hours and leaving it in the pot until it cooled down. The next day we had a melt-in-your-mouth octopus salad). I got the inspiration for this Asian grilled octopus salad from David Chang, and threw a 2Gourmaniac twist to it. Basically to prepare the octopus, I braised them in an Asian court bouillon for a couple of hours, and then I drained them and seared their legs for a minute or two in a cast iron skillet. After that I combined my vegetables and vinaigrette with the octopus and served it. More precisely, here’s what I did:
For the octopus:
4 pounds baby octopus: if frozen, thaw in cold water or in the refrigerator
For the court bouillon:
4 cups of water
2 cups of mirin
3 cups of soy sauce
2 cups of sake
2/3 cups of rice wine vinegar
Method:
Heat the oven to 275º. Combine all the ingredients for the court bouillon and bring to a boil, boiling for a couple of minutes, and then reduce heat to a simmer. Now here’s the fun part: take each individual baby octopus, using tongs grab it by its bulbous head, and dunk just the legs in the court bouillon for a couple of seconds until they curl back up into the body (kind of like it’s testing the water with its toes), then drop the octopus into the court bouillon. Repeat for the rest of the octopuses. The idea here is to make sure the legs retract and curl up to form a base onto which they will be able stand when it’s time to char them. Cover the pan and pop it into the preheated oven for two hours.
After they’re done (try one…it will be incredibly tender, and it picks up the flavor from the court bouillon) drain them. You can cool them and use them right away or refrigerate them for a couple of days. I made mine a day in advance.
For the Salad:
1 pound packaged bamboo shoots finely sliced into long slivers
3/4 cup finely sliced scallions, white and green parts
2 cups julienned, peeled carrots
2 heads mixed greens, washed and shredded
2 tablespoons black sesame seeds
2 tablespoons Sichuan pepper, finely ground
For the Vinaigrette:
4 tablespoons finely chopped garlic
4 tablespoons peeled and thinly sliced ginger
1 teaspoon pickled chiles (easily found in Asian markets. We pickle our own)
1 teaspoon Thai bird chilies (if you can’t find them substitute jalapeno or serrano chilies)
1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
1/2 cup light soy sauce
4 tablespoons light neutral oil (canola or grapeseed)
3 tablespoons sugar
Method:
Wash, chop and julienne all the vegetables and greens. Place all the ingredients for the vinaigrette in a glass jar, cover it and shake to mix. Combine all the vegetables minus the greens with the Asian vinaigrette. Get a heavy cast iron skillet and coat it with a tablespoon or two of canola oil. Take each one of the octopuses one at a time and set them down on their curled legs for probably no more than a minute or until they are charred. Remove to the bowl with the vinaigrette and the veggies. I coated the shredded leafy greens with olive oil and a little rice wine vinegar before adding the octopus and the vegetables. Mix well and serve. It was a hit at the dinner table!
RMA