Portuguese · Main
Polvo à Lagareiro
- Intermediate
- 2 h
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
Leads with a briny, maritime salinity, aromatics blooming from the first bite, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 1 octopus, 1.5–2kg, cleaned (frozen and thawed is BETTER: the ice does the tenderizing)
- 1kg small potatoes, skin on, batatas a murro, 'punched potatoes'
- 1 head of garlic, cloves smashed; bay leaves
- 200ml of your best olive oil: lagareiro means the oil-press man; this dish is his tribute
- Cilantro or parsley; coarse salt
The skills inside
The words inside
Cephalopods (Squid, Octopus, Cuttlefish)
Allergen screen
Found: shellfish · molluscs
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Simmer the octopus with bay and an onion, gently, 50–60 min until a knife slides into the thick tentacle; rest in its liquid. 60 min
- Roast salted potatoes until tender; give each a gentle punch to crack it open.
- Octopus and potatoes into a roasting dish; bury in garlic; flood with olive oil.
- Roast 220°C, 15–20 min until the tentacle tips char and curl. Serve in the oil: it is the sauce. 20 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Roasting in a hot oven 56 recipes
- The oven was fully up to heat before anything went in, given time beyond the indicator light rather than judged by it.
- Every piece has air around it. Nothing touches its neighbour and nothing is packed to the edge of the tray, because crowded food steams itself in its own moisture and never browns.
- Colour is even across the whole tray, the tray having been turned at least once: no pale row at the back and no dark row at the front.
- It came out BEFORE the target temperature, not at it. Carryover keeps driving the inside up by several degrees after it leaves the oven, and that rise is part of the cooking rather than an error in it.
- The temperature was read at the coldest part rather than the easiest one to reach, and read again after the rest.
Where it goes wrong The tray was crowded, or the oven was not truly up to heat. The food releases steam faster than a cool box can carry it away, so it sits pale and slack, and the extra minutes spent chasing colour take the inside well past where it should have stopped.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño or Muscadet
- Also Right
- Assyrtiko or Vermentino
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with lemon
The Atlantic’s whites beside the sea’s own liquor: salinity in sympathy, acid keeping everything bright.
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