more with octopus and bone marrow

The cold weather is giving us ample reason to stay in and cook, and a couple of new ideas came up for the remainder of our bone marrow and octopus.

Grapefruit is just awesome this time of year, and there have been some really incredible rubies in the markets... bright and pungent with great sweetness and light acidity. I love the combination of arugula, grapefruit and peppery olive oil for a simple salad packed with vibrant, beautiful flavor... maybe with some marcona almonds as well for their richness.

When we were traveling in Greece over the summer, we had a simple, awesome grilled octopus dish. Ever since, I've been wanting to use octopus more, either grilled or seared to try and get the same sweet, smoky char to the flesh. We had just a few slivers of octopus left, so I sauteed them in a bit of olive oil just until the white flesh gained some of colour, then diced them up and tossed them with grapefruit supremes. The mild citric acidity of the grapefruit really brought out the intrinsic sweetness of the fresh octopus. The light salad turned out to be a good counterpoint to the richness of the rest of dinner: a pan-roasted pork chop with parsnip puree and a soft boiled egg with crispy bone marrow on a balsamic marrow jus.

I am absolutely loving working with the bone marrow. For this dish, we simply sliced a small portion from the marrow lobe, seasoned it with kosher salt and dusted it lightly with flour. The marrow was then sauteed in a touch of olive oil over medium heat for about 90 seconds per side (depending on how thickly the marrow is sliced). The result was a crispy exterior with near-molten rich marrow encapsulated on the inside. The crispy marrow served to add a gush of decadent saltiness to season the egg. Egg and marrow seem to be a very natural pairing, both in flavor and texture... seems like there are a lot of possibilities here...

Well, that pretty much does it for our supply of marrow... which is a good thing, because I just read that each ounce of bone marrow has 300 calories, and basically all of that is from fat... dang!


bone marrow, octopus