Galician octopus tapas 蛸のガリシア風タパス

As I mentioned earlier, with a whole octopus in the house, we had a lot of octopus eating to do. As a result I had to come up with something totally different from my usual recipes. I was thinking of making "tapas" and looked for recipes. There are many "Galician" octopus recipes. Although they are essentially boiled octopus eaten with paprika and olive oil, how to boil the octopus ranges widely from just boiling it in plain water to boiling it in highly seasoned broth. I took a middle-of-the-road approach heavily influenced by Chef Eric Ripert's recipe.


I started with two legs of boiled octopus. I added salt (1/2 tsp), Fino sherry (1/2 cup), lemon (1/4, juiced), black pepper corns (5) and smoked paprika powder (1 tsp), and crushed garlic (2 cloves) into the water (3 cups) (below picture, left). I put on an "otoshi-buta" 落とし蓋 and then a regular lid and cooked it on a very low simmer for 1 and half hours (Picture below right).



When it cooled to room temperature, I sliced it rather thickly and sprinkled on smoked paprika powder and a good amount of good fruity olive oil (the first picture).

This was not bad but despite the long cooking, it was still a bit chewy. Initially I tasted some bitterness while it was hot, but the bitterness disappeared when it cooled to room temperature. Two of us quickly consumed the two good sized legs.  I don’t think I will buy octopus just to make this particular dish but if you should find your self in the position of having an excess amount of octopus, this is a good dish to try.