Olive-Fried Octopus

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Preparation info
    • Difficulty

      Easy

Appears in
Cheong Liew: Inside My Food

By David Sly and Cheong Liew

Published 2025

  • About

This is inspired by Cheong’s earliest cooking venture in Adelaide, at the Iliad Greek Restaurant. The giant octopus is a predator of rock lobsters and regarded as a pest by lobster fishermen. However, the Greek community knew just how to deal with this ‘poor man’s lobster’.

Method

My version is to prepare hot olive oil spluttering in a deep pot with crushed olives, dried chillies and whole garlic, and then lower the octopus gently into the smoking pot – with considerable caution, I warn you, because the oil spits. When brais