Cooking, like many things, is about setting goals and figuring out how to meet them. At its simplest level, you’re balancing all of the “tastes”: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, umami. We’ll be having the sweetness of the fingerling potatoes, the sourness of the vinaigrette, the bitterness of the frisee, and the umami from that octopus. We want the octopus to be tender, and well seasoned, and this method is pretty darn easy. 

Every step of the cooking process is an opportunity to add flavor. We’re going to make a court bouillon to take this octopus on a trip to Flavortown. In a large pot of water, toss in roughly chopped vegetables, like a mirepoix, I didn’t really have onions, but I had celery scraps, an errant carrot, some mandarin oranges, and a lemon. Then I added aromatics, like parsley stems, a few cloves of garlic, black peppercorns and a bay leaf. To that, pour in a healthy cup of wine, nothing fancy, but something you’d drink, and a handful of salt. You want it to kind of taste like a wine soup. I used a rioja, keeping with our Iberian theme. Take a minute to mince a clove of garlic and cut up a lemon and anything else you’d like to make a lemon vinaigrette with and set aside. Fish that octopus out of your fridge then push the beak out and pull it off, Cut off the head just above where the tentacles meet. Rinse the octopus well, and then right into the water. Bring to a boil and then drop to a simmer. We’re going to cook that for about an hour to an hour and a half, the bigger the Octopus, the longer it will take. Just check it , try cutting through the base of a tentacle with a paring knife. Don’t be afraid to try a little bite to double check the tenderness.

While the octopus is enjoying its jacuzzi, make a lemon vinaigrette however you like. For me, I just moved and the pantry is a little thin, it was the juice of a lemon, about the same amount of tuscan olive oil, a clove of garlic, some smoked paprika, a turn or two of black pepper, a pinch of sugar and a pinch of salt. Dijon mustard or honey are great stabilizers for your emulsion if you want to store it in the fridge for a few days.

In the last 20 minutes of the cooking time, throw some fingerling potatoes in cold salted water for your fingerlings, you want to cook them until they are just cooked in the middle, until a paring knife pierces and slides out easily, depending on how big they are 10 to 20 minutes.

If you have a good grill, feel free to get it screaming hot and do this last step on it. But I used a well seasoned cast-iron grill pan. We are going to toss our potatoes with a nice olive oil and then set them on the grill at an angle and leave them alone for a couple of minutes. We want some nice grill marks on these babies.