Bucatini, Spicy Red Sauce & Octopus

When visiting my younger daughter in New York City before Christmas, we dined at The Reading Room one night, and shared an exquisite starter of octopus with romesco sauce, shown below. (I could have eaten there every night of my visit!)

The next day at Amarena for lunch, I enjoyed bucatini with arabiatta sauce and octopus. I love octopus! And yes, I’ve seen the incredible documentary My Octopus Teacher.

I ended up with a whole frozen octopus after the holidays, so I decided to put it in a pasta dish with a spicy red sauce, but adding a romesco component to it for extra depth, essentially combining the flavors of my fabulous octopus dishes I devoured in NYC. Romesco is primarily roasted red bell peppers.

I looked through my book The Young Man and the Sea, by David Pasternak and Ed Levine, and found the perfect pasta with red sauce and octopus recipe. I’ve made Ventresca Tuna Salad from this same book; David Pasternack is a James Beard award-winning chef also known as the fish whisperer! Unfortunately his seafood restaurant Esca in NYC closed because of the pandemic. You can read his bio here.

Instead of cooking the octopus in the sauce, as the recipe states, I used my sous vide. I’d never cooked octopus that way before and it’s pretty miraculous, as always. The original recipe is below, and printable.

I wanted to use include a favorite ingredient of mine from Hungary, paprika creme. There’s both a sweet and a spicy variety that comes in jars or tubes. So I combined paprika creme with the tomato sauce in this recipe to create a Romesco-inspired-sort-of-red-sauce. (If you don’t have romesco or paprika creme, puree some roasted red bell peppers into the red sauce.)

With respect to romesco’s ingredients, I topped the pasta dish with chopped almonds, which added a nice textural element.

Bucatini with Baby Octopus Sauce
Somewhat adapted
Original printed recipe below

1 – 2.5 pound whole octopus
3 tablespoons extra-virgin oil, plus more for drizzling
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
4 whole dried arbol chile peppers (one can substitute crushed jarred Calabrian chiles)
1 – 16.5 ounce can whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes (I used crushed New Jersey tomatoes)
Sea salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 pound dried bucatini (I only used 8 ounces)
2-3 ounces paprika creme
Chopped almonds, for serving
1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped, for serving

The day before you plan on serving this pasta dish, sous vide the octopus at 160 degrees F for 12 hours, or at 175 degrees F for five hours. When it’s done, submerge the whole bag in icy water until it’s cooled off, then place in the refrigerator overnight. Get out the octopus about 1 1/2 hours before beginning cooking, and cut the legs into bite-sized pieces. Set aside and proceed with recipe.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil for the pasta.

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium flame until hot but not smoking. Add the garlic and the chiles and sauté until the garlic begins to show color, about 4 minutes. (I stopped short because I don’t like burnt garlic.)

Add the tomato sauce, season with 1/2 teaspoon salt and the black pepper, then simmer, partially covered, for about 20 minutes. Remove the lid, raise the flame to medium high and simmer briskly until the sauce has begun to thicken, about 7 minutes.

Stir in the paprika creme.

Add the octopus and stir into the sauce. Let heat through then turn off the fire.

Add the bucatini to the pot of boiling water and cook for 1 minute less than the box directs. Drain the pasta in a colander and add it to the saucepan. Toss the pasta and the sauce thoroughly to combine.

Divide among four serving bowls, drizzle with high quality extra-virgin olive oil and sprinkle with the almonds and parsley.

Sprinkle with additional sea salt, if desired.