Freakish Sea Creatures--They're What's for Dinner!

I may have given you the impression here that A. can't cook. That's not actually true. He can cook, he just hasn't in awhile. He used to cook sometimes when he was in law school and I was working full-time. His specialities were stuffed meat and fried meat. Sometimes stuffed AND fried at the same time. Not so much with the vegetables. The whole idea of a "balanced meal" kind of slides by him.

Anyway, he hasn't been cooking because he's been working 10 hours a day and I've been home, so food was my responsibility. But now that he's quit his job and is home (surprise!), he can cook again. And what did he choose to cook on his first foray into the kitchen in about three years?

Help me, Jesus.

In case your Disgusting Seafood Identification skills are a little rusty, allow me to help you: that's a whole octopus. Thankfully, minus the head, but still. Whole. Intact. Long tentacles still attached to the body and everything. And you can't see it, but one of those tentacles actually wrapped around a wooden spoon that was in the sink. When A. lifted the thing for this photo, the spoon rose up with the octopus. OH MY GOD. I can only assume it was an involuntary contraction, because the thing was definitely dead. I only know that because it, uh, didn't have a head and all.

ANYWAY.

So A. bought this whole octopus at the regular old grocery store like three months ago, along with some salt cod and dried calamari or something. The dried calamari he ate. The salt cod I actually cooked with. The octopus . . . well, the octopus sat there in the freezer, because neither the MiL nor I wanted anything to do with it. And A. wasn't cooking. But now he is! So let's have the octopus for dinner! YAY!

So here's what he did: He boiled the whole thing in a pot of water for a couple of hours. Then he drained it, cut it into chunks, dipped the chunks into egg and then seasoned flour, and deep-fried the chunks in lard and canola oil.

Actual words that came from A.'s mouth during this process:

1) "Hey, cool. It's writhing around in the water. Come look!" (And then I said, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?")

2) "Huh. It's turned the water purple." (And then I said, "STOP TELLING ME THESE THINGS IF YOU WANT ME TO EAT THIS.")

Oh God.

Also of note was that while A. was cutting the octopus into chunks, one of the tentacles fell on the kitchen floor and Mia wouldn't eat it. Mia will eat ANYTHING that falls on the floor--raw onion, lemons, possibly coins. Belle the Devil Cat, however, DID eat it. I tried not to see those as ominous signs.

But in the end, it was . . . not bad. I'm not a seafood person, so I didn't love it, but it wasn't overpoweringly fishy-tasting. It was fairly tender, because of the boiling before the frying. I didn't so much dig the texture of the little sucker things from the tentacles, but all in all, could've been worse. A. and the MiL agreed that it tasted like fried clams, but more tender and a little sweeter. So. Yeah. Purple water aside, pretty good.

We also had hush puppies, made from a recipe from this cookbook, that were YUUUUM. And a green salad, because there are three lettuce beds in the garden that are attempting to stage a coup and take over. But the octopus was the real star of the show, of course.

So, who wants to come for dinner next time A. cooks?