Diary of a Tuscan Chef Excerpt

Snack time! If you had the pleasure of dining at Coco Pazzo then you may have tried this before. Delicious!

SOPPRESSATA DI POLPO CON SALSA DI CAPPERI ED OLIVE

Baby Octopus Salami with Caper and Olive Sauce

I first made this dish when I was at Coco Pazzo. I’d just come back from a vacation in Italy, where I’d had a similar dish at my friend Lorenzo’s restaurant. Walter, my sous chef, and I came up with our own version. I especially like it in the afternoon as a “lite” snack.

Serves 8-10

2 (1-pound) baby octopus, cleaned*

1 large red onion, quartered

3 cloves garlic, peeled

2 stalks celery

2 carrots

1 sprig each fresh rosemary, sage, thyme, and basil

8 cups well-washed arugula

Caper and Olive Sauce (recipe follows)

If you are using regular octopus, freeze it overnight, then defrost it before you start to cook. That will help tenderize the meat.

The day before you want to serve the soppressata, fill a large pot with water and add the octopus, onion, garlic, celery, carrots, and herbs. Bring the water to a boil, then simmer for approximately 1 hour, until the octopus is tender, not chewy.

* NOTE: Most good fishmongers will sell octopus already cleaned, but if you want to try cleaning the octopus yourself, start by locating the valve (it almost looks like an eye) on the underbelly. Remove it with a sharp knife. Make a slit under the eyes and cut them out of the head. Use that opening to turn the octopus head inside out. Scrape off the brains and reverse the head to right side out. Rinse the octopus well. If you don’t want your hands to smell, I suggest wearing surgical gloves to clean the octopus. Otherwise, you can rub your hands with lemon after you’re done cleaning up.

For the next step, you’ll need two 9-inch loaf pans or 2 small, deep containers, one of which fits exactly into the second.

Drain the octopus and place it immediately in one of the containers. Make sure all the tentacles are inside, and force the second container on top of the octopus. Squeeze down as hard as possible so you are compressing the octopus into a small block.

Tape the 2 pans together with heavy-duty packing tape. Set the pans on a counter top and weigh them down with something very heavy. Once the octopus has cooled, after 1 or 2 hours, place the pans in the refrigerator, still weighted, overnight.

When you are ready to eat, remove the tape from the 2 pans. Insert a knife inside the rim of the top pan and run it around the edge to loosen the soppressata. Turn the inside of the pan up-side down and bang it on the counter. It might take 2 or 3 tries, but eventually, the soppressata will pop out.

Arrange the arugula on individual plates. With a very sharp knife, cut slices of the soppressata as thin as possible. Lay 3 or 4 pieces on top of the salad and drizzle each serving with the caper and olive sauce.

NOTE: There are a few different types of soppressata in Italy. One, found in both Emilia-Romagna in the north, and Puglia and Basilicata in the south, is a stuffed sausage made with cut instead of ground meat. It is aged, not cooked. Before machines, it took two people to make this type of soppressata, one to hold the sausage casing and one to stuff it with meat. The sausage had to be packed in tight--soppressata means super-pressed--to eliminate pockets of air where bacteria could grow.

In Tuscany, soppressata is a cross between paté and salami, made from all the poorest cuts of the pig: the head, ears, nose, cheeks, hooves, knuckles, and skin. They are first cooked, then either stuffed into a casing and cooked again, or stuffed into the skin from the head of the pig and cooked. When a butcher wants his clients to know he’s got soppressata, he just leaves the pig’s head on the counter and sells the “salami” by the slice. It goes in a flash.

SALSA DI CAPPERI ED OLIVE

Caper and Olive Sauce

2 tablespoons drained capers

2 tablespoons pitted and chopped imported black olives

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano

1 cup roughly chopped plum tomatoes

1 teaspoon chopped garlic

1 tablespoon fresh Italian parsley

1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon sherry vinegar

1 tablespoon red wine

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Put the capers, olives, red pepper flakes, oregano, tomatoes, garlic, parsley, and basil in the bowl of a food processor and puree. Pour the mixture into a bowl and add the vinegars, red wine, lemon juice, black pepper, salt, and olive oil. Stir to combine.

BASIL: There’s more to basil than pesto: It was sacred to the Greeks, who called it “The King”; it was used as an embalming agent in ancient Egypt and to ward off dragons in medieval Europe. I think basil is best fresh, or cooked as little as possible. You can eat the whole leaves in a salad or with tomatoes. I love basil with lobster or a delicate white fish such as bass. Basil is easy to grow at home on a windowsill with lots of light. Please don’t use dried basil.