Octopus Galician Style..

Paul the German psychic octopus has become a bit of a world celeb. If Paul's vision is right yet again, Spain should win the World Cup this Sunday. There is talk of the Germans being so upset with Paul after their defeat earlier this week that they are considering making one of Galicia's most traditional dishes their own, yep, octopus!

The most common way of eating octopus in Galicia is what Spaniards call 'Galician Style' and Galicians call 'a feira' or 'Fair Day Style'.

Fair Day Octopus is traditionally boiled in a copper caldron, then chopped, sprinkled with sweet and hot paprika, sea salt (coarse) and a drizzle of olive oil. Served warm.

At home, you can cook it in a normal pot. Firstly, you must wait for the water to boil and dip the octopus in and out of the water 3/4 times, apparently this prevents it from peeling. Then leave the octopus in, once the water is boiling again. Usually it takes around 30 minutes for each kilo to cook. What my dad does is put a medium size potato boiling with the octopus and once the potato is ready, so is the octopus. It is usually better to undercook it than overcook it and risk having mushy octopus. Serve warm - on a wooden plate if possible!

Grilled octopus with a drizzle of olive oil and sea salt is also delicious. After boiling, cut the octopus tentacles lenghtways and grill for a few minutes each side.

In Santiago de Compostela is also quite common to find 'empanada de pulpo', octopus (pastry) pie. I'm not a big fan of octopus empanada as the meat tends to become a bit chewy but I absolutely love empanada in general though. Other simple octopus and Galician recipes can be found on http://www.lareira.net/ (in Galician and Spanish).

Buying octopus in Ireland (in the country at least) can be a bit tricky, though. We have bought octopus (frozen, which is actually good because it helps make the meat more tender) at the Wrights of Howth fish shop (from France) but I'm told many Asian shops in Dublin city sell frozen octopus from Galicia. It's in my 'to-do' list. for my next trip up to the big smoke.

Here The New York Times' Matt Bittman cooks octopus Galician style. Watch his Video.

Watch out Paul...