Octopus & Reactopus Walk Into a Bar / Octopussy

One of my all-time favorite novels, Motherless Brooklyn, as a hilarious Tourettic telling of this joke (mine is sans Tourette Syndrome outbursts, read the Jonathan Lethem novel to get the full effect).

A guy walks into a bar with his pet octopus. Puts the octopus on the bar and bets the bartender a hundred bucks the octopus can play any musical instrument the bartender can come up with.

'Fine,' the bartender says, 'There's a piano.' And the octopus sits down and plays a nice little étude. 'Pay up,' the guy says, but the bartender comes up with a guitar. The octopus tunes the guitar and plays a little fandango on it. The guy with the octopus asks again to be paid, and the bartender pulls out a clarinet.



The octopus isn't great on the clarinet, but he can get by. 'Pay up,' the guy says again, and the bartender says, 'Wait,' and goes into the back room, digs around until he finds a set of bagpipes.

Puts the bagpipes on the bar and the octopus starts checking it out, lifting one pipe and letting it drop, lifting another pipe. The guy who brought in the octopus says, 'Aren't you going to play it?' The octopus says, 'Play it? If I can get its pajamas off I'm gonna fuck it!'



Ba-doom-dah. I'm here all week.

But anyway, this is all a way of delaying the inevitable, when I admit this is another pizza post.



I was going to get the anchovies at the store and spotted something I'd never seen. Tinned squid and octopus. Last time I remember having octopus was that Dominican restaurant in New York, about five years ago.

Octopussy Pizza
1 medium vidalia onion
2 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. fenugreek
1/2 tsp. powdered thyme
crushed black pepper (to taste)
2 bay leaves
Caramelize the onions with the rest of this stuff and then put on the pizza along with
black olives
tinned octopus
a little mozzarella
a little 5-cheese parmesan/romano/etc. shredded blend
a little crumbled bleu cheese
Spray the edges of the crust with olive oil pan spray, if desired and bake on the stone, 7 minutes at 550ºF.



I made a black olive/mozzarella pie for Em as well, and she had complained about the floured surface of the dough on my latest pizzas. I admit a time or two it's been a bit much for me. The dilemma is how to keep shit from sticking, and flour works pretty well.



Right before moving from peel to stone, I sprayed the perimeter of the crust with some olive oil pan spray, just enough to absorb the worst of the excess flour and help the edges brown. It's a trade-off, Em liked the surface texture better, but you lose some of the surface crispness.



The octopus is good, smokey and salty, a tad chewy. It plays well with the tang of the bleu cheese and sweet onion. The calamari I got is packed in some sort of sauce, I'll have to sample it to figure out what else would go on a squid pie.