Is Octopus Trayf (and other urgent questions)

The fact is yes, it is trayf. Meaning non-kosher. C’nest pas kascher. Just like the little piggy, up top.

I’m certain that it’s because of its lacking fins and scales. I’m also certain that there was nothing in Leviticus about great, sea-going beasts possessing tentacles and suction cups. My people didn’t know from tentacles and suction cups.

Sand, yes. Suction cups, no.

Anyway, I’m not kosher, but Passover is in a few weeks, and I’m generally predisposed to cutting back on my trayf intake during this holiday. Although I once did give all the bread in the house to a neighbor, and forgot the smoked ham hock that was buried in the back of the fridge, waiting to be cut up and cooked with lentils.

Yesterday, Susan and I were on our way home from the city, and we stopped at the Fairway on 132nd Street, which feels a lot more like a normal shopping experience than, say, a trip to the Broadway branch, which, when it gets packed with angry, rushed customers pushing overstuffed shopping carts, can be like the chariot scene in Ben Hur. Especially when you get to the olive bar.

The place is enormous, and “the cold room”—really an immense walk-in without a door—had some pretty gorgeous fish, meat, and poultry for sale. I picked up a Label Rouge chicken, which I stuffed with tarragon and garlic, and roasted last night; it was everything that it was supposed to be. And then I realized that my doctor had recently told me to eat more fish, so I bought a few small whitings, which I’ll rub with salt and pepper, and then grill, like sardines.

But while I was standing there, waiting for the nice lady to gut my fish, I started to think about octopus. The night before, Susan and I had been at Motorino, where we had their lovely octopus and potato salad with lemon, capers, and hot red pepper, and I realized exactly how much I love it. So much so, that when I’m at a Greek restaurant, it’s practically all I’ll eat: octopus, charred, tender, lemony, flavorful, delicious, and light.

I’ve never made one, though. I was in Greece years ago and did see some fisherman whacking them on the rocks by the shore, like they were trying to kill a bug with a pillow filled with laundry. But it’s odd bringing four pounds of sloshing, sloggy octopus into one’s suburban Connecticut house, especially with that head. What the hell is IN that head? And what about the beak? Where’s the beak? And the eye? Clifford Wright says something in one of his recipes about making sure to remove the eye, and for whatever reason, that’s where I draw the line: it gives me these strange crawling feelings right underneath my rib cage, like what happens when the roller coaster reaches the very top of the track.

But yesterday, while standing at the fish counter at Fairway, I said to Susan “you know, I really think we should get an octopus—”

She stared at me blankly.

“Okay, honey,” she said. “I think I saw some on the other side of the case.”

And this is why I love her. It could be octopus. Or rabbit. Or even the braised pig tails we had at Momofuku the other night, which she scarfed down despite the fact that she has a pronounced hatred of having to nibble around cartilage. The woman can’t even eat a soft shell crab, and when I tried to get her to taste a trippa alla fiorentina sandwich one late morning at Nerbone in the Mercato Centrale in Florence, she took a bite, turned pale and said it was like chewing on a 1960s bathing cap.

But she was willing to do this, even though “I think we should get an octopus” is just not one of those things that you find yourself saying too much during a lifetime spent shopping at suburban supermarkets, or even places like Fairway. Especially if you’re not Greek. Or Italian. But, the way I see it, it’s all experience.

The fish lady held one up by the head. It was straight out of Herman Melville.

“Good?” she yelled from the other side of the counter-

How the hell should I know? I murmured.

We checked out a little while later with the oddest combination of purchases: Label Rouge chicken. Fresh broccoli rabe ravioli. Two sour oranges. A bag of Lentils du Puy. A wedge of Pecorino Toscano. A box of matzo from the Negev. And a four pound octopus.

I spent last night researching the myriad ways in which to prepare it. Sometime around ten o’clock, while Susan was busy watching her beloved Connecticut Huskies lose their Final Four match to Notre Dame, I had decided on Michael Psilakis’s braise-and-char method, which I’ll make tonight, assuming it doesn’t rain and I can light the grill.

But meanwhile, I sit here, blithely writing away in my office down the hall from the kitchen, while there is a great, tentacled beast lurking somewhere in the back of my fridge, nestled between the leftover chicken, a container of Benacol, and a jar of Tiptree jam, just waiting to greet me with open arms.