This dish can be served as canapés, as an appetizer or even a main course. I use it mostly as canapés when I host large groups of people for Thanksgiving or Christmas.
serves: 10-15 difficulty: medium prep time: 1 hr
Ingredients
- 2 lbs small potatoes
- 1 octopus
- 1 can chopped tomatoes or 2 fresh tomatoes
- 2 tbs harissa
- 1 cup olive oil
- 5 cloves of garlic
Suggested equipment
- sous vide machine. Mine is Joule.
- plastic bag for sous-vide
- vacuum sealer
Preparation
Octopus is a tricky and time-consuming thing to prepare but I have found that poaching it in olive oil in the sous-vide machine produces the best results.
First you need to blanche the octopus. In a large stock bring water to boil. Put the octopus in, and boil it for 10 min. Remove it from the boil, and let cool off enough so tht you can handle it.
Slice off the head of the octopus. It has a hard beak in the middle of the body that you also need to cut out. Then starting from the center of it, make cuts so that to remove the tentacles. You should be left with the 8 tentacles of the octopus.
Season the tentacles with 1 tbs salt and the harissa. Place the tentacles in the sous vide plastic bag, pour the olive oil in the bag, and vacuum seal it.
Place the bag in the sous vide machine and sous-vide for 7 hrs at 171 degrees.
In the meantime, prepared the potatoes as described in the potatoes with olives and basil post, only that you skip the olives.
Once the octopus is cooked, take it out of the sous vide bag, heat some olive oil in a fry pan, and give the octopus a quick fry for 2 min on each side.
If you are serving it as canapés:
- Slice the octopus tentacles in 1/2 inch pieces
- Skewer an octopus piece on a toothpick, and then pierce a potato slice from the round side
- Stand it up in a platter with the potato cut side down.
If you are serving it as an appetizer or a main course:
- arrange a few potato pieces on the plate and top with a whole octopus tentacle.
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