Cold Italian Seafood Salad
One of my favorite new shows is Ted Allen?s Chopped, which debuted last week. I think it is really interesting to watch what different chefs can do with the same ingredients.
On the first episode, in the appetizer round, one of the ingredients that the inspiring chefs had to use in the dish was octopus. This is a very difficult ingredient to cook. I have been cooking octopus for a few years now because my husband loves cold Italian seafood salad. I am going to offer my tips for dealing with this unusual ingredient.
I typically boil the octopus for about 20-25 minutes. Then, I like to cut off all of the tentacles and purple skin because it is rather tough. On Chopped, the octopus looked smaller than the pieces I normally use for my recipe. So, just make sure to boil it until it is tender if you buy larger pieces. When making the seafood salad, however, I find that the octopus holds the flavor of the marinade better and becomes more tender without the purple skin.
My cold Italian seafood recipe is as follows:
pound octopus cut into pieces
pound shrimp
pound calamari
3 celery stalks
Juice of 2 lemons
Olive oil
1 tbsp. black peppercorns
5 cloves garlic
Salt and pepper
Fresh parsley
Fill a pot with water and add salt, peppercorns, 3 garlic cloves, and celery. Bring to a boil.
When water is boiling, add shrimp. Boil for about 3 minutes. Remove shrimp and put into a large bowl to cool.
Add calamari and boil for about 3-4 minutes. Remove and add to the bowl with the shrimp.
Last, add the octopus and boil for 20-25 minutes until tender. Remove and clean the purple outer later and tentacles as described above. Add to the bowl with the rest of the seafood.
Next I like to drain the water and remove the celery because I like to add it to the seafood salad.
Once the seafood has cooled, add juicy of 2 lemons, cup olive oil, salt and chopped fresh parsley.
Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours, preferably 24 hours. The longer the better.
This salad is really delicious and healthy. This is may favorite way to make it, but there are many different versions and you can add any seafood that you like and any other herbs you like.
Enjoy!
