I wish to impress upon the many
and sundry the fearsome degree of my hardcore-ness.
For this lunch, I have cooked octopus! Not storebought
packaged cooked octopus, but real baby occies cleaned
and cooked all by myself, with not even a recipe to
help me!
Are you impressed yet?
Cleaning octopus is not a difficult task, but
it does remind me of high school biology class. If you've
cleaned a chicken or fish you know what I mean. I used
baby octopi because I heard that the adults are tough,
and you have to beat 'em with a hammer if you don't
want to be eating rubber. Baby octopi are tender and
require no pulverization. Well and good, but if you
have one large octopus you only have to clean it once,
and the bits are large enough for you to distinguish
easily. Baby occies, you have to clean ten or however
many of 'em you have, and guesstimate where the guts
end and the regular body begins. Still, it wasn't that
much of a task.
Another neat thing about cooking octopus: the tentacles
curl during cooking. I knew that, but I was still startled
when I put them in the pan and they started writhing!
It's a good thing I'm not squeamish. I only wish I could
have made a video of that.
Wow, that's appetizing talk. It was worth it in the
end. The octopus -
which I sauteed in butter on the principle that you
can never go wrong with sauteeing seafood in butter,
and served with some konnyaku noodles* that came in cool
little bundles - was tasty and neato-ish. Not hugely
filling, as they shrunk during cooking. But that's why
we have things like steamed
green beans, baked Japanese sweet potato,
boiled egg, stir-fried
teriyaki tofu, and fruit
salad with strawberries, kiwi fruit, and rambutans.
* Yeah, I know that konnyaku in noodle
form is called shirataki, but the package said konnyaku,
so I'm sticking with that.
Wanna talk
about it?
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