by Andrew Post

Created on: April 19, 2008   Last Updated: March 08, 2009

This recipe is not for the faint of heart. I do not suggest trying it if you dislike working with tentacles. You also need to live within thirty miles of a grocery store that actually sells things with tentacles, preferably. All that having been said, I now announce with the greatest pleasure, the recipe for that spicy, savory Greek delight known as octopus in red wine.

Ingredients:

-2.25 pounds octopus

-8 tablespoons olive oil

-12 ounces small onions or shallots

-0.25 pints red wine

-6 tablespoons red wine vinegar

-8 ounces canned tomatoes, roughly chopped

-2 tablespoons tomato puree

-4 bay leaves

-2 teaspoons dried oregano

-2 tablespoons chopped parsley

-black pepper

Directions: First clean the octopus. Pull off the tentacles, remove and discard the intestines and the ink sac, the eyes and the beak. Skin the octopus and wash and scrub it thoroughly to remove any traces of sand. Cut it into 1.5-2 inch pieces and put it into a saucepan over medium heat to release the liquid. Stir the octopus until this liquid has evaporated. Pour on the oil and stir the octopus to seal it on all sides. Add the whole onions and cook them, stirring once or twice, until they color slightly. Add the wine, the vinegar, tomatoes, tomato puree, bay leaves, oregano and several grindings of pepper. Stir well, cover the pan and simmer very gently for 1-1.25 hours, checking from time to time that the sauce has not dried out. If it does (and this would only happen if the heat were too high) add a little more wine or water. The octopus is cooked when it can be easily pierced with a skewer. The sauce should be thick, like a runny paste. If any of the liquid separates, remove the lid from the pan, slightly increase the heat and stir until some of the liquid evaporates and the sauce thickens. Discard the bay leaves and stir in the parsley. Taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning if necessary. Serve, if you like, with rice and a salad. A Greek essential is country bread to mop up the sauce. Serves 4-6.

I've only ever done this once and the octopus I got already had already been cleaned; I just had to remove the eyes and skin it. Skinning it was very tricky. I'd had to soak the thing in warm water to get it to thaw out, and it was wet and very slippery. To skin it, I simply sliced the skin open with a small knife until I get a grip, then pulled and yanked it off by degrees. It's a good idea to wear an apron while you do this and not a brand-new shirt like I was wearing, which promptly got covered with octopus juice. Slicing and cooking the octopus was fine; but it was necessary for me to add more puree after the concoction was through simmering to thicken up the sauce. A proportional amount of spices need to be added so the sauce doesn't taste overwhelmingly of tomatoes. Make sure the parsley's chopped fine, and believe the recipe when it says to leave the onions whole: I used pearl onions and they were bite-sized and very pleasantly flavored after simmering in the sauce. French bread works just as well on sauce-mopping duty as any other country bread. Since this recipe uses red wine, it goes well with red wine to drink (and, I presume, red wine vinegar on the salad). The only other piece of advice I have to offer is...enjoy!

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