octopus salad, arugula; lamb sausage, potatoes, cress

There are a few things I prepare at home for which I have make almost no apologies when I slip from the locavore thing. One of them is octopus, and if we could find this cephalopod on the east coast I’d be happy to stop raiding Spanish or Moroccan waters for one of my favorite sea creatures.

The picture below is of the bucket of cooked octopus at Eataly on Monday; we enjoyed a section of it in an appetizer in this meal.

  • four ounces of cooked octopus from Eataly Flatiron, sliced in small sections, tossed with a little Frankies 457 Sicilian olive oil, Maldon salt, freshly-ground black pepper, Safinter La Vera region smoked Spanish paprika, and cut chives from Phillips Farms
  • wild arugula from Lani’s Farm, dressed with more of Frankies oil, Maldon salt, and pepper
  •  slices of a a demi-baguette from Eataly
  • the wine was an Italian (Molise) white, L’Indovino Bianco, Salvatore 2015, from Astor Wines

The ingredients of the main course were pretty much determined by the sauce that remained from  our Sunday meal of braised lamb: A lamb sausage seemed a perfect, and a perfectly-simple choice for a reprise, although it took some looking before I actually found some.

This is Eataly’s house-made sausage lying on our kitchen counter before it was cooked.

  • an 11-ounce ring of a merguez-like ‘housemade lamb sausage’ from Eataly (the lamb came from Van Wells Family Farms, Watertown, SD, fried slowly, ring intact, inside a heavy tin-lined copper skillet
  • ten or so pinto potatoes from Norwich Meadows Farm, scrubbed, boiled, unpeeled, boiled in generously-salted water until barely cooked through, drained, halved, dried in the still-warm vintage Corning Pyrex Flameware blue-glass pot in which they had cooked, tossed there with a bit of Portuguese olive oil Whole Foods Market, seasoned with sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, arranged on the plates, sprinkled with chopped parsley from Eataly
  • a rich, red-onion-based sauce remaining from an earlier meal of Sicilian stew of lamb, saffron, and mint, heated and arranged over the sausage and the some of the potatoes
  • wild cress from Lani’s Farm, dressed with Frankies 457 Sicilian olive oil, Maldon salt, and freshly-ground black pepper
  • the wine was a French (Rhône) red, E. Guigal Côtes-du-Rhône Rouge 2014, from Landmark Wine & Spirits