cooking/eating octopus

[land-lubber]

hey guys
after fishing with Fishingnottaken on the weekend, and catching heaps of occys on sps, i was wondering about how you kill/skin/cook them and are they worth eating??
cheers

[Volvo]

Occies on SP's???...Okay tell me the size of em and i'll tell ya how to make a dishout of them...
Far as killing them goes you can do it two ways..Cut n turn head inside out with your hands n knife or chuck em in a bag and freeze em....
If they is big suckers and you have plenty of patience there is a method of tenderising them, but let sheat the size of the ones you cought first ey??.
Cheers

[land-lubber]

soz, no piccies, but they were around 25-30cm across from tenticle to tenticle and head around 10-15 tall

[Volvo]

Little fella's,good .They come out a treat ..Hokeydokey,cut the old head off, clean head satchel out of all the gooee stuff and wash out clean.
Spread out the tentacles and take one snip from the middle on one side down as far as you can go and remove the beak n whatever may be there ya dont want so all you have left is the skirt with all tentacles...Wash n put aside.
Can cut the skirts in halfe if you wish but no big deal leaving as is,i normally cut in halfe.
Hope you have a few in your possession cause they fade away to a smidgeion of what they originally were after the process as an occy is mostly or near all fluid..
Next!! according to how many you do have , grab yourself a good pot to accomodate em all and cut yourself a few onions into rings or slices, depending how your taste is on garlic a few cloves cut up as well,.
Drop of ye ole Olive Oil in the bottom of the pot and braise or brown your onions n galic..
Drop in all the Occie skirts in the pot and stew away on low heat slowly stirring away every so often.
Ye will notice that the occie will give off/turn into liquid so keep stirring till near all the liquid is Finitokuptolamussica (near evaporated).
Have a nice drop of red Wine or Port and add or make up to the pot when the occies liquid is near gone and keep stewin away slowly..
NOW!!!when you see the ole Vino slowly dissapearing add some Tomato paste to the Pot only enough to add some good colour and thicken the dish a littl ey..
Stir and dont let everything dry out/evaporate the liquids/vino too much, if it does !!?? "What the feck!! add some more Vino"..
Easy for me to rattle this all off my head but you might have to read first to get the engerdients and basics before proceeding and also maybe try a couple of times to get the right taste to suit you but trust me its a top dish ...
If one likes Occy that is..
Other ways of preparing Occy but i find this one of the best..
You can eat the above dish as is as an Entree or prepare some rice, add the occy and have as a main dish..
Kalli Orreksi mate and hope you enjoy
Cheers
just hope i aint fergotten nuthin .

[land-lubber]

cheers for that, it actually sounds reletively simple to do, as i have a fair nous in the kitchen now ill have to go and catch some more we got 3 or 4 that night on berkleys and squidgies. a real slow retrieve works well. like rapidly flicking rod tip to just move the plastic but create a lot of movement while the plastic remains almost motionless. at least i know my retrieves are slow enough
cheers

[Volvo]

No probs mate n sure you'll find the dish pleasing.Have a couple of mates who do a bit of snorkeling and drop off a big one every now and then for either the barbi or pickling..Unless heading out for Reds .
Find the smaller ones at Sams and think they are fresh i buy a heap and do as previous mentioned.
Like i said though, you need a fair swag of em as they do eveaporate away a fair bit..
Cheers