It’s summer in L.A. and it’s HOT! It’s also a time to be celebrating seafood, given that we just returned from ten weeks in coastal Italia and we ate the highest quality seafood you can imagine. My go to fish store in Italy was Pescheria Moreno in Senigallia. Everything they had was super fresh and local and the husband and wife team who owned the place had great ideas for preparing each kind of fish.

Continue reading Charred Octopus Salad with other Goodies at Our Italian Table.

Octopus is finally available again in seafood stores in Southern California. In Italy, being able to buy freshly fished octopus is nearly a birthright. Along the entire coast of the southern portion of the Italian peninsula—from Naples on the Mediterranean Sea to Marche on the Adriatic—and all the way around Sicily, the seas are full of octopus! Each region has specific preparations that they call their own, and one common dish shared by most regions, with regional variations, is the octopus salad.

Continue reading Drunken Octopus Salad at Our Italian Table.

Michele and I had lunch today before the big event at probably the best Italian seafood restaurant in NYC – Marea (Marea-NYC.com) which means “tide” in Italian. This is the second time I’ve eaten here and it was recommended by our friend Jeremy Parzen at dobianchi.com

For lunch they have a two-course business lunch and I found the food to exceptional!!

For the primo, I had a warm octopus salad with potatoes.

Continue reading Lunch at Marea NYC – Recommended by @dobianchi at Our Italian Table.

There’s a joke running around the Los Angeles restaurant scene that if your menu doesn’t include a kale salad, a fancy octopus salad, and PBR, you might as well not even open your doors. The herd mentality of those on Yelp and other Los Angeles hipsters is driving chefs to a restaurant culture that is not found elsewhere in nature. Don’t even get me started on “small plates”!!

This recipe is not fancy, it simply celebrates octopus—straight up.

Continue reading Just octopus! – Spaghetti con polpo at Our Italian Table.

As we wrap up our food-and-wine tour of Sicily, I thought I’d finish with one of Sicily’s most under-appreciated seafoods, the octopus. This is my take on an octopus dish at Sotto Restaurant in Los Angeles, and it shows that the octopus is a versatile palette for the flavors of Sicily.

The key to this recipe is finding good octopus. And while the soft texture of a stewed octopus is great, grilling them just before serving, with breadcrumbs sprinkled on top, adds a really nice crunch.

Continue reading Polpo in Umido alla Siciliana (Sicilian Stewed Octopus) at Our Italian Table.

Seafood salad is served all over Italy: anywhere near the sea and with ready access to seafood, which is most of the country. This is also a traditional dish for Christmas Eve, but in the case of a hot day in Los Angeles, it’s the perfect light dinner. The “southern Italian” part is that seafood salads in the south of Italy are much simpler than elsewhere in Italy. They are often made of just marinated seafood on a simple salad with some bread to soak up the juices, with lots of lemon and a bit of the Mediterranean region—capers and olives.

Continue reading Southern Italian seafood salad (Insalata di mare) at Our Italian Table.

Octopus is so easy to find, it’s too bad people don’t cook with it more. You can buy it fresh at fish stores or frozen at Asian markets. For this recipe, I prefer small baby octopus that are defrosted in advance of cooking. The wine that is added to the sauce gives the pasta a nice stained look.

Ingredients and Directions:

Serves 4.

• Salt
• 2 pounds octopus, cleaned or substitute frozen baby octopus
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• Hot read chili flakes
• 1/2 cup oil-cured black olives, pitted
• Freshly ground pepper
• 1/2 cup dry red wine
• 1 pound good-quality linguine
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• Crusty bread

Bring a pot of water to a boil.

Continue reading Linguine piccanti con polpo e olive: Spicy linguine with octopus and olives at Our Italian Table.