Three Octopus Salads a la Marketman

With a base layer of thinly sliced octopus on the plate, it was easy to come up with different variations on a theme. For the first salad, a nice pile of wild arugula and some chopped tomatoes on top. I used a red wine and mustard vinaigrette and tossed the greens and tomatoes in the dressing before piling them onto the octopus and drizzling any remaining dressing onto the octopus. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

For the second salad, I simply “garnished” the octopus with some chopped tomatoes, grilled red peppers sliced marinated artichokes, olives, capers and drizzled this with olive oil and fresh lemon juice. Salt and pepper to taste. The capers and olives were nice, but I wouldn’t put the artichokes the next time around. If we had some Italian parsley in the fridge I would have added some for color contrast…

The third salad was similar to the first one up top, but with the addition of shreds of jamon serrano. The salty pork against the octopus and the fresh greens was wonderful. It’s true that pork makes almost anything taste better (except for pork barrel spending, of course).

A bit of the last salad with a slice of french bread. Delicious. Will have to file this recipe away for our annual holiday dinners…