Made in Italy: Food and Stories. Giorgio Locatelli

       Insalata di polpo e patate novelle Octopus salad with new potatoes

      For years, I always boiled octopus in water, the way I was taught when I first started cooking. Then one day I was with my good friend Vincenzo Borgonzolo, who used to own Al San Vincenzo, which was one of my favourite family-run Italian restaurants in London. Vincenzo grew up a true Scugnizzo Napoletano, one of the street urchins who give the city so much of its colour. For some reason we were talking about octopus. He asked me how I cooked it and when I told him, he said, ‘But you don’t have to cook it in water – it has enough water of its own.’ He showed me how he cooked his octopus for forty minutes with no water, just simmering it gently in oil so that it released its juices and moisture into the pan, braising itself in its own liquid. You end up with a fantastic concentration of flavour and an incredibly tender octopus. After it is cut up and cooled a little, it becomes rich, sticky and gelatinous and really meaty in the mouth, with a huge flavour of the sea. When I saw the octopus done this way, I couldn’t believe it. Brilliant, brilliant. How could it be that I never knew about it before? It seems this method of braising is the way they cook octopus in Napoli, with the addition of tomatoes, where it is eaten with bread – but in the North I had never seen it done. (By the way, in the North we call octopus polpo, in the South it is polipo.) I can honestly say I had been wrong for twenty years. Except for certain recipes, like the Octopus Carpaccio on page 99, boiling is completely the wrong way to cook an octopus.

      Ask your fishmonger to clean and prepare the octopus. If you can’t find a fresh one, use frozen, which comes ready cleaned and works almost as well. It will already be tenderised, as the freezing process breaks down the cell structure. If you use a fresh octopus you will need to bat it before cooking.

      1 large octopus, cleaned

      1 large chilli, split in half

      2 handfuls of flat-leaf parsley

      4 garlic cloves

      6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

      8 small new potatoes, scrubbed

      1 onion, chopped

      3 tablespoons white wine vinegar

      juice of 1 lemon

      2 celery stalks

      small bunch of chives

      2 handfuls of mixed green salad leaves (optional)

      2 tablespoons Giorgio’s vinaigrette (see page 51, optional)

      salt and pepper

      Wrap the octopus in a cloth and bat it with a meat hammer for 3-4 minutes to tenderise it. Rinse well under cold running water for 10-15 minutes, to take out any excess salt.

      Put the chilli, one handful of parsley, 3 whole garlic cloves and 3 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large casserole. Add the octopus (don’t season it, or it will toughen up), cover with a lid and simmer gently for about 1½ hours, until tender. Leave to cool.

      Meanwhile, boil the potatoes until tender, then drain. When cool enough to handle, remove the skins.

      Heat a couple of tablespoons of the remaining oil in a small casserole, add the onion and sweat until soft but not coloured. Add the white wine vinegar and let it bubble until completely evaporated. Remove from the heat. Cut the potatoes into quarters, mix with the onion and season to taste.

      Squash the remaining garlic clove to a paste with the back of a knife, then put the rest of the parsley on top and chop it so that the two mix together well.

      When the octopus has cooled enough for you to handle it, remove any big suckers and discard, then cut the rest into small chunks and put into a bowl. Add the parsley and garlic, and the lemon juice. Season if necessary and mix in the rest of the olive oil. (At this point, you can keep it in the fridge for 2-3 hours and finish it just before serving.)

      Cut the celery into julienne strips, and the chives into short lengths. Combine the potatoes with the octopus mixture and add the chives. If using the salad, dress it with Giorgio’s vinaigrette and some salt and pepper. Arrange on serving plates and put the octopus and potato mixture on top. Garnish with the celery.

       Carpaccio di polpo Octopus carpaccio

      This is the exception to the rule of not boiling octopus, because in this case you need to keep as much gelatine as possible inside the octopus (rather than letting it come out as the octopus cooks in its own juices). It is this gelatine that will hold the pieces of octopus together in the carpaccio.

      

      When you slice and serve the carpaccio, it looks beautiful: the perfect pearly-white flesh of the octopus, with its purple streaks, against the bright red of the tomato and the green of the basil. We serve it as a starter, but it would also be fantastic as part of an antipasti.

      

      The trick here is not to boil the octopus too fast. Just bring the water up to the boil, then turn down the heat and keep it simmering very slowly. Also, put a couple of corks into the pot – don’t ask me why. I don’t know if there is anything scientific about it but Corrado Sirroni taught me to do it in my first job and I have done it ever since.

      1 large octopus

      1 lemon, cut in half

      1 onion

      1 carrot

      1 celery stalk

      2-3 bay leaves

      3 black peppercorns

      wine glass of white wine

      To garnish:

      3 tomatoes, deseeded and finely diced

      2 tablespoons Giorgio’s vinaigrette (see page 51)

      small bunch of basil

      3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

      salt and pepper

      

      Put the octopus in a large pan and cover with cold water. Add the lemon halves, whole onion, carrot and celery stalk,

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