The curled octopus busara style is an easy and quick seafood recipe from Venetia using tomato sauce, white wine, garlic, parsley and chili pepper, served with white polenta… buon appetito! Find this and many more recipes with pictures on the Giallozafferano App (in English) http://itunes.apple.com/app/giallozafferano-recipes/id384387249?mt=8
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Today we’ll be making a Venetian recipe, specifically from Caorle: the curled octopus busara style! The curled octopus are cooked in a tomato sauce, flavoured with white wine, garlic, parsley and chili pepper and served with white polenta… an easy and quick seafood recipe, let’s make it together!
Curled octopus busara style
(for 4 servings)
For the polenta
• 1 ½ cups (250 g) of stone-ground white cornmeal
• 2 pints (1 lt) of water
• ¼ tbsp (3 g) of coarse salt
• ½ tbsp (6 g) of extra virgin olive oil
For the curled octopus
• 1 1/3 lbs (600 g) of curled octopus
• 1 1/3 tbsp (20 g) of extra virgin olive oil
• 1 unpeeled clove of garlic
• less than 1 cup (200 g) of dry white wine
• 1 ½ tbsp (25 g) of tomato paste
• 1 fresh chili pepper (or ground, to taste)
• salt to taste
• chopped parsley, to taste
First of all, prepare the polenta, in this case white polenta, another Venetian recipe. It’s made from white corn, called Biancoperla, and it goes perfectly with seafood, as it’s mild in flavour. So, fill a pot with water and bring to a boil, add salt… a little oil… and sprinkle the cornmeal into the water, stirring vigorously with a whisk to prevent lumps. After adding all the cornmeal, you can stir with a wooden spoon for at least 40-50 minutes. Reduce the heat to as low as possible and continue to cook, stirring constantly for at least 50 minutes, as I said before.
While the polenta is cooking, move on to the curled octopus: here’s a pot of boiling water, add salt… drop in the curled octopus… and cook for about 20 minutes from the time the water returns to a boil: this is the time needed for cooking an octopus of about 1/3 pound (150 g). After 20 minutes, test for doneness with a fork: if you want your curled octopus to be more tender, cook for another few minutes. If you want to reduce the cooking time, use a pressure cooker and cook for about 10 minutes. Of course the curled octopus need to be cleaned before cooking, which means washing thoroughly under cold running water and cutting out the eyes and beak, that is the tooth at the junction of the tentacles. According to the traditional recipe, you don’t need to clean the sac.
Well, the polenta is done, if you want it soft, add a little hot water and stir occasionally while waiting for the curled octopus to cook; otherwise transfer to a baking pan or oven dish and let it thicken, then cut into slices and grill. The curled octopus are cooked and cooled, so drizzle a little oil into a pan… crush the unpeeled clove of garlic and add to the pan, along with the chopped chili pepper, use fresh chili pepper… or, as an alternative, ground chili pepper to taste. Stir with a wooden spoon and sauté on a low flame. Meanwhile, take the curled octopus and cut in half lengthwise. The dark colour is due to the ink sac, that hasn’t been cleaned. So, cut in half, then add to the pan. Now add to the pan… and sauté for a couple of minutes… then add the tomato paste, that has been dissolved in the white wine. After that cook on a low flame until the sauce has thickened. It seems that the dialect term busara means lie, fraud, because the fishermen used these ingredients, including tomato, to cook the waste of the daily catch in order to conceal the fish flavour. Busara is a cooking method used for shellfish and crustaceans, it’s very popular in the North-East of Italy but it comes from the Istrian peninsula.
Serve the curled octopus with the polenta, soft or grilled, and sprinkle with chopped parsley as a finishing touch… buon appetito!
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