A Typical Portuguese Octopus Salad

Every time we buy an octopus to cook, it feels like we´re going to feast on it for a full week. And while I had no problem with eating french fries every day for a month when I was little, nowadays I get a bit bored of repeating a meal too many days in a row. So I kept some tentacles from last week´s octopus and instead of reheating them, I repurposed them for a typical Portuguese octopus salad. The octopus salad is possibly one of my favourite ways of eating octopus as it is fresh and a perfect blend of flavours drowned in olive oil. I used octopus that we had boiled and even cooked in the oven previously, so please keep that in mind if you trey to reproduce this week´s #homemadeMonday. Also, considering this is an appetiser, the picture here has about two portions of the salad in it so keep that in mind when planning.

Ingredients
(serves four as an appetiser)

300g of cooked octopus
one small green pepper
one small red pepper
a medium small onion
two garlic cloves
a handful of fresh parsley or coriander
four tbsp olive oil
two tbs vinegar
salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Chop the peppers, onion and garlic into small bits, transfer them to a medium sized bowl, season them with a tablespoon of olive oil, salt and pepper and let sit while you cut the remaining ingredients.

2. Cut your octopus tentacles into 1 cm slices, and half them if they´re too large. Add them to the bowl of veggies.

3. Chop your parsley (or coriander – this is more typical but I am not a big fan) really fine and add it to the bowl. Mix everything.

4. Drizzle with the remaining olive oil, vinegar (I skip the vinegar because I really hate the taste) and season with plenty of salt and pepper.

5. Let sit in the fridge for about an hour before service as an appetiser.