Octopus salad is a salad preparation involving octopus. This salad is popularly enjoyed throughout the Europe, Asia and North America with same fervor and interest. However the Octopus salad is popularly savored by Europeans, Americans and Asians with interest, and enthusiasm, but that does not taste same everywhere. Octopus is the common ingredient which binds these recipes but other combining ingredients vary according to taste preferences.
Octopus has been an integral part of the European way of life since long time. Many people believe that octopus salad belongs to Greek because they are fascinated with the octopus. But that’s not true because octopus is eaten in most of the other parts of the world too. But Greeks experiment with their salads more than anyone else that’s why they are often confused as the creators of this salad. Normally octopus legs are used in the salad preparation because they taste very good. Many octopus salad recipe variations may demand using cooked or grilled octopus and the choice of form purely depends upon the cook. Greeks mostly treat their octopus with vinegar or lemon juice and olive oil.
Essential Ingredients Prescribed by Basic Octopus Salad Recipe
Octopus remains the chief ingredient in the octopus salad recipe and its variations. Other than that some of the common ingredients used in the preparation of octopus salad include cucumbers, carrots, celery, red bell peppers, lettuce, radicchio, onion, olive oil and bay leaves. In addition to that lemon juice, salt and pepper, oregano is used for salad dressing.
Method of Preparing Octopus Salad
Responding to the requirements of basic octopus salad recipe the salad preparation begins with cooking octopus. The octopus is cooked with celery, carrots, and onions in water. When cooked, the octopus is cleaned under the running tap water. In the meanwhile other vegetables are chopped and combined in a bowl. Then cooked octopus and other ingredients like- salt, pepper, oregano, lemon juice, and olive oil are added to the bowl and blended well. The salad is left undisturbed for long time before serving because this allows the flavors to mix.
The choice of flavoring ingredients and their combining proportions may vary from people to people owing to their taste preferences.
Eating and Serving Octopus Salad
The Octopus salad can be eaten as complete meal or it can be teamed with rice.