Pixie in Paradise

DISCLAIMER: This post is about preparing octopus for dinner. Vegans and animal activists proceed with caution. I’m not looking to get canceled, I am just hungry.

This is not a cooking blog but I will try to explain how I came upon a fresh octopus for dinner. I love grilled octopus, scallops, boiled crab, and “non-fishy” fish. Isn’t that the dumbest thing to say? I like most seafood, but growing up in Wisconsin then making my home in Arizona, neither remotely near ocean, hasn’t enhanced my culinary skills with underwater delicacies. I’ve cooked some weird shit though, how hard can this be?

Obsessed with finding fresh seafood to get my hands on, I watch the group chats on social media, waiting for the seafood market or local fishermen to post their daily catch. For the most part it’s a lot of whole red snapper and I’m definitely not at the level yet where I can clean my own fish. I’m also not mentally or technically prepared with the skill to try eating a whole fish again. The last time I was in Caye Caulker, my best friend and I ordered a seafood platter to share because we were mostly interested in the lobster and shrimp. We both failed at trying to dissect the whole roasted fish. There were tiny bones all over, forcing us amateurs to walk away still hungry, giving up most of the meat. 

A couple mornings ago, one of the fishermen finally posted fresh octopus again so before tackling the rest of my day I attempted to find his location to buy the prize. The instructions were: “behind the fire station, next to the cabanas.” There aren’t many street addresses with numbers here. The locations are all pinpointed by “Front,” “Middle” and “Back” street, but there are a few actual street names as well that help. The problem for me is that they will give directions to a particular street and that’s it. I have to go up and down a street to find the business I’m looking for. Or, they’ll tell me that the business I’m looking for is next to XX Grocery or XX Hardware, or some very tiny obscure location that is no longer purple, it is now painted green. Walking around the village is definitely the best way to find what you’re looking for. Whizzing by even slowly on a bicycle I miss so many things, as biking in itself requires all my brains and talent not to hit anything or fall off. I’m not a clumsy person and my balance is pretty solid but make me ride a bicycle near obstacles like people, buildings and free range island dogs and it will get interesting. If you want proof of that, refer back to the bicycle versus golf cart incident here).

The fisherman is between my apartment and the village, not too far, maybe a mile. As I approach the fire station – one rickety old truck and an even older building behind it – I don’t see any signs or anything to indicate I’m in the right spot. Confused, I asked three men that were sitting across the street. They didn’t look very friendly and most likely not official tour guides, but two of them at least got up to walk with me into a smelly little area where there were a few small housing structures. They said something in Creole and nodded that this was where I should be. As I walked closer, the rotten fish smell was horrid and I saw two guys cleaning and preparing their catch. It just feels like the wrong time to use the word “cleaning.” 

One guy barely looked up from preparing fish, but the other one listened to my request and pulled two small creatures out of his cooler. He weighed them, put them in a wet bag and set them down. I had anticipated this mess and brought extra plastic bags – I take some everywhere now that I’ve seen how products are bagged up after purchase here. I returned home with an octopus in my bike basket, wondering how to prepare it for cooking. After researching a few pieces of information on how to do this on the internet, I think I sort of have an approach. (Turns out this won’t be the exact approach I take next time)!

I place the octopus into the freezer for a couple hours, then open the bag and rinse it under tap water and remove a bit of slimy stuff. Later on I learned that the freezer step should last two days and at some point before or during cleaning, the octopus should be rubbed with sea salt for seven minutes. I don’t know, I’m not casting a spell, we’re just trying to eat dinner! At this point I’m just very excited that I have fresh octopus for a fraction of the cost of a restaurant meal and hoping it tastes just as good. Rasta has never tried octopus in the entire six years he’s lived on the island so I’m also excited to make it for him.

After rinsing, the octopus goes into a pot of boiling water, then gently simmers for an hour. This step cooks the meat and my plan is to marinate and saute for the entree, not even thinking about what to serve with it. After this I throw the octopus into an ice bath, realizing it doesn’t look as clean or free of “stuff” hanging off of it as it maybe should. Tidying it up a bit over the sink I start to feel like an important step was missed – by me. Not really caring that much because I am going to sautee this beast no matter what.

We’ve wasted too much time on the food prep but for whatever it’s worth the octopus was actually tender! The real story here was Rasta trying octopus. This guy will eat anything but pork, anything. But when I sat dinner down in front of him, happy that I’d at least cooked the thing, he sat still looking at his plate. Normally he would dig right in whether I’m at the table or not – it’s not an overly civilized household we maintain. This was different. His face got a little crinkle between the eyebrows and he scrunched his nose a little and said, “Babe. I’m not sure I can eat this.” I burst out laughing, he was still looking skeptically at his plate. Through a brief conversation in which I promised him I wouldn’t force him to eat it, I learned he draws the line at cephalopods and bivalves, two of my absolute favorites. However, he loves to eat conch and we’re both anxiously waiting for the conch season which is October to June. We are in lobster season at the moment, July through February. Because he’s a good sport and always hungry, Rasta took a few bites of octopus out of curiosity as I handed him a bowl of fresh guacamole which he then added to a sandwich – that he made.