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this weekend in food
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September 03, 2002
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Just a note to let you know: The Napa/French Laundry Trip entries are up. Read at your own peril. Ignore to your own detriment.
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I was a cooking maniac this weekend. Oh, sure, I went through a phase after visiting Napa during which I didn't want to eat anything fancier than a fake chicken patty on a bun. (Actually, it was only a couple of days; I don't suppose that qualifies as a "phase".) But by Friday night we had to go to the grocery store just to have anything at all to eat, and by then I was well over any squeamishness or inferiority complex I had about cooking. Here's what I made this weekend:
Octopasta
I purchased a frozen block of baby octopus a month ago intending to make an octopus stew sometime. When I return from Napa, I figured maybe I'd do something with it. But I wasn't in the mood for stew, so I thought I'd try an octopus pasta.
It took me almost an hour to clean the octopi. (That's right, they don't clean them before they sell them -- this is Chinatown, after all.) But after that, they were surprisingly easy to cook. I sauteed some garlic and aromatic vegetables in a pot, then added 2 cups of chicken stock, let it reduce a bit, then added a whole bottle of red wine -- I used an inexpensive Rioja -- and brought the whole thing to simmer. Then I added the cleaned octopi, covered the pot, and let the whole thing cook for an hour.
I then pulled the octopi out with a slotted spoon, asked Rebecca to rub the skin off (which took longer than we expected) and chop them into bite-sized pieces, after which I put them back in the wine/stock mixture and let it cook for another hour, half covered, half uncovered.
Forty minutes in I started some water boiling for the pasta, and I sauteed some garlic in olive oil in a wide pan. To the pan I added mushrooms, a few tomatoes, and whatever other vegetables hadn't gone bad in the refrigerator while I was on vacation. I sauteed them until I felt happy, then I added a chopped yellow bell pepper and sauteed a little bit more. I added the pasta to the boiling water. I then strained out the octopus and added that to the saute. I turned up the heat on the wine/stock mixture so it would reduce more effectively, and added some honey to sweeten it and little flour to thicken it in the process.
When the pasta was done, I drained it, rinsed it,and put it back in the pot, added the vegetable/octopus saute and some pepper, and added the reduced sauce and mixed it all together.
It turned out surprisingly well! That was my first experience both cleaning
and cooking octopus. Personally, I don't understand why octopus isn't
more popular than squid. It keeps better when frozen, for one thing. And
its texture when slow cooked is
Read more about the preparation of octopi here.
Pork Shoulder Redux
I've tried a couple of times to reproduce Eman's Braised Pork Shoulder with Apples and Olives and Truffled Mashed Potatoes. The first time I tried to adapt it to a crockpot and I screwed it up. The second time I over-embellished the dish and ruined it.
I was finally in the mood to try it again. This time I just focussed on the basic recipe. I did it on the weekend so I had time to cook it slowly. I was very happy with how it turned out. My only criticisms are that I could have cooked it at even a lower temperature and managed the internal temperature of the meat better.
I still have half of a roast left. I plan to try again this weekend.
September 3, 2002 in old_site, recipes, soups_stews | Permalink
