Octopus salad

Insalata di polpi. From Puglia. This is one of my favourite antipasti.

 

Octopus salad ingredients

 

• 1 large Octopus (at least 500g), cleaned
• Parsley, chopped
• Olive oil
• White wine vinegar
• 1 clove Garlic, finely chopped
• Salt and pepper

 

 

 

1. Put the octopus in a large saucepan and cover with cold water.
2. Bring to the boil and cook over a medium heat until tender – about 25 minutes.
3. Allow to partially cool in the cooking liquid.
4. Cut into bite size pieces, dress with vinegar and garlic and allow to marinate for at least a couple of hours.
5. When you are ready to serve, adjust the seasoning and dress with olive oil and parsley.
6. Serve as an antipasto or main course
7. Variation: Substitute lemon juice for the vinegar.

 

 

Octopus salad finished dish

 

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Panzanella Laziale

Panzanella Laziale. There are probably as many versions of this dish as there are cooks in Italy. This one comes from Lazio. Panzanella is a great way to use up stale bread.

Panzanella ingredients

• 1 kilogram stale bread
• 8 ripe tomatoes — deseed and chopped
• 1 bunch basil — torn into small pieces
• olive oil
• white wine vinegar
• capers (salted or in vinegar) to taste
• anchovies to taste

1. Soften the bread with a little water and tear into smallish pieces.
2. Mix together the bread, basil, tomatoes, capers and anchovies.
3. Dress with olive oil and a little vinegar (if the capers are in vinegar don’t add any extra).
4. Leave for 30 minutes to allow the flavours to develop and serve.
5. Variation: Leave the slices of bread whole and serve topped with the rest of the ingredients.

Panzanella

Courgette salad

Some friends recommended a little osteria in the old city, so I gave it a go last weekend. We were warned beforehand about the offhand rudeness of the staff. Just as well, because it wasn’t an exaggeration 🙂

“You want to eat? Sit there! No, not there, THERE!”

He was just as bad to the locals, so we didn’t feel picked on. The food more than made up for it. (It was actually quite entertaining in a ‘Fawlty Towers’ kind of way)

This is my attempt to recreate a salad served as part of the antipasti. Again, it is so simple that it doesn’t really count as a recipe. You must use really small and fresh courgettes though.

Courgette salad ingredients

• Small, very fresh courgette,, halved and then thinly sliced.
• white wine vinegar
• olive oil
• salt

1. Season the courgettes with a little salt and then dress with oil and vinegar (about 3-1 oil to vinegar)
   Errrmmm…that’s it 🙂

Courgette salad

The original version looked like this.