Dear God, This I Miss.

Found a blog/site titled Catalego that brought stomach memories hard and heavy. The main photo pretty much did me in.

Pulpo a la Gallega or Octopus Galician style which is simply the cooked critter drenched in olive oil, dusted with smoked paprika and served in a wood platter. The crusty fresh bread is necessary because it will be used to soak and ingest the juices, oil and paprika. Only thing missing from that photo is the toothpicks that are used in lieu of fork to bring those delicious morsels to your mouth.

I haven’t had octopus in a very long time. It is not easy to find and the very few I have seen are scrawny frozen crap I would not dare to ingest. It is not a hard item to cook: just clean, boil whole till soft and cut with scissors to the desired lengths. then just serve in the wooden platter and add the olive oil and smoke paprika.

I have no idea if they still are done, but every time I visited Galicia was during the time of the “Feiras” (fairs) in the fall or early winter and just like the country fairs in the US, you will have your food tents with assorted delicacies. One of my fondest memories with my father was in 1980 and we were in the city of Pontevedra, and they were having a fair. Mom was off with her sisters browsing tents with other crafts and widgets while my dad and I headed for the food stuff. There we found stand after stand of the most incredible country victuals and, I kid you not, twelve stands offering octopus.

Each stand claimed to have their own secret recipe for the way they prepare the mollusk, and we truly could not decide which to eat or even begin to try. For kicks I told dad that we make it a competition and eat one of each stand. To my infinite surprise as he was never for games, he accepted.

I won. He called it quits after the 7th plate, and I did nine and a half. And a bunch of Gallegos food sellers were just stumped at the two idiots on their way of serious indigestion that barely were able to drag themselves into their car and pass out trying to digest so much octopus. Somehow, we survived but not before we got a severe scolding from mom which included asking herself why she married one “estupido” and managed to give birth to another.

And as a good son of Galicians, my pantry does indeed have respectable quantities of olive oil and “Pimenton Español” which was recently used for Calamares a la Crema (squid in cream sauce) one of my mom’s recipes that I still cannot get close to her perfection.

But octopus in Tennessee? Short of traveling to Chattanooga and raiding the Tennessee Aquarium, I do believe I will not find decent octopus and relive an old gastronomic memory.

Oh well.