TASTE OF THE SEA

India exports octopus in large quantities, and now the cephalopod has begun to feature on the menus of upscale Indian restaurants. But will you eat it?

Earlier this year, after consuming a bowlful of Naengmyeon—a type of Korean noodle broth which to my surprise arrived chilled with ice floating in it—at a restaurant in New York’s Koreatown, I found myself, a week later, in the grim neighbourhood of Chinese immigrants in Flushing, Queens, at yet another Korean establishment trying something even more outlandish. In front of me on a bed of green vegetables and large mushrooms, with dipping sauces as accompaniments, were small scissored pieces of live, slimy and wriggling octopus tentacles.

The more adventurous customers at other tables ordered whole pots of seafood that along with noodles, clams, shrimps, molluscs and other types of sea creatures, came topped with an entire living octopus of significant size. The octopus, simmered but alive, crawled around the pot of its dead ocean brethren with its eight long tentacles as customers employed knives, fingers and even their teeth to tear off pieces of it. Often, the customers had to seek help, and an obliging cook would appear with a pair of scissors.

I had seen with delirious mirth the scene in the South Korean cult film Oldboy, where the lead, played by Choi Min-sik, consumes a large octopus; and also the YouTube clip of the filming of the scene, where the actor, a Buddhist, consumes a number of octopuses each time saying a short prayer to get the scene right, but the sight at the restaurant was macabre and ghastly. I tried catching the moving pieces on my own plate a few times. But even if I picked just a tiny piece or cloaked it in lettuce and cabbage, the sight of something wriggling at the other end of my chopsticks completely put me off the dish. I settled for some other seafood, something cooked and unmoving, instead. My companion, however, was less squeamish. Squiggly piece by squiggly piece, sometimes slurping and sometimes chomping, he polished off almost the entire plate with the thrill of what I then suspected was some deep-seated primordial human predator instinct.

I had supposed the octopus would be less popular in India, if not completely unavailable. But it turns out that it is not just abundantly available off the Maharashtrian and Keralite coasts, it is exported to the Far East and Mediterranean countries in large quantities, and is also widely available in many local restaurants.

Every day, except at high-tide, fishing trawlers leave the coast of Mumbai, and return with fish, prawns and cuttlefish. Now there is a new catch—the octopus. In the past, fisher- men, unaware that the octopus could be sold or eaten, tossed back what came up with the trawler’s shrimp catch. According to Sujit Sundaram at the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Mumbai who wrote a paper about octopus-fishing off the Mumbai shore, some exporters started exporting frozen octopus in 1988. “It was more of an experiment. And a batch of 72 kg of octopus was sent to Japan, and 19,480 kg to Greece,” he says. “Then in the 1990s, more export houses, chiefly those based in Kochi, Mumbai and Gujarat, started sending more supplies of the cephalopod. And today, India is one of the key exporters of octopus worldwide.”

Of the 300 known species of octopus, according to Sundaram, around 38 are found in Indian waters, with the Octopus vulgaris being the most common. With more demand, the prices have also shot up. “In 2001, it used to be available for Rs 13 per kilogram at the landing site,” he says, “Now, you can’t get anything for less than Rs 60.”

Realising that the octopus is badly affect- ed by exposure to sunlight, fishermen now carry tanks of chilled seawater in their boats to better preserve the creature. Most of the octopus is taken to processing units within four to six hours of being brought ashore, where it is gutted, processed and exported to the Far East and Europe. Some of these perhaps come back to the city after being cleaned and cut in those foreign lands, through the local restaurants that order their octopus from those countries.

The octopus, AS one would expect, tastes of the sea. It is tougher than most other meats, since it has no bones and is filled with muscles that support each other, and isn’t particularly easy to cook. Even if it is slightly overcooked the meat becomes rubbery and chewy. Most preparations involve tenderising the meat through a combination of massage, braising, blanching, and blunt force. In Greece, where the octopus is widely consumed, fishermen are known to beat it against the rocks to tenderise the meat. Some say that cooking the meat with a wine cork helps. Most others, however, either dip it in boiling water several times or boil it for more than an hour, depending upon the octopus’ size.

Shumu Gupta Rai, who runs FishVish, an online store that sells seafood including octopus to locals and restaurants in Pune, regularly uses it in salad or a stir-fry. “To me, it’s a beautiful meat. Its texture is nothing like that of any other animal or seafood,” he says. Gupta usually boils small chopped pieces of the octopus—which he procures in frozen form from export houses in Kochi before it is shipped out—for at least an hour and a half, before trying to cook it. “It is not for everyone, I get it. But more restaurants want to serve it and they procure it from us,” he says. According to Gupta, FishVish sells between 200 and 300 kg of octopus every month, most of it to various restaurants in Pune.

Some people say frozen octopus is preferred as the meat arrives somewhat tenderised. When I asked Mandar Madav, the Executive Sous Chef of JW Marriott’s pan-Asian restaurant, Spices, if that is why the restaurant buys its octopuses from Japan, he replies: “People in Delhi say the mutton in Jaipur is better than theirs. And those in Jaipur say the mutton in Delhi is better. The reason is that freezing helps the carcass of the animal loosen up after rigor mortis. The same with the octopus. It doesn’t tenderise it. It just loosens it up.” According to him, like many other restaurants, they order their octopus from foreign shores because of the assured quality.

Fine dining restaurant The Table in Colaba, Mumbai, serves a grilled octopus, which comes balanced on saffron potatoes and celery, and topped with salsa verde. When the restaurant opened in 2011, it procured its seafood from the nearby fish market. The restaurant’s chef Alex Sanchez claims that if fish, especially octopus, is exposed to the sun for too long, its exterior often gets damaged if it doesn’t go bad altogether. The restaurant now has its own supplier who gets it the best catch available. Often, however, satisfactory octopus pieces are not found and the restaurant does not serve the dish. “We, as a principle, always work with fresh seafood. So if good pieces are unavailable, we just don’t serve it,” Sanchez says. When it does get good octopus, oftentimes the octopus is alive and moving when it is brought to the kitchen. “So we just bash it on its head,” he says.

Madav claims that octopus is a tough sell. JW Marriott’s Spanish restaurant, Arola, where he worked earlier, has discontinued its octopus stew Pulpo, because of poor sales. “We would land up throwing whatever Pulpo we cooked in the morning,” he says. “Very rarely was anyone eating it.” Spices, where he now works, serves octopus sashimi and nigiri. “But the people eating it are usually Japanese guests or locals who want to Instagram pictures of the dish,” he says.

When I ordered the sashimi and nigiri, nothing, fortunately, wiggled. The octopus slices in both dishes were slightly boiled, unlike how it normally features. The octopus slices in the sashimi did not flap around, and the octopus atop the sushi rice in the nigiri stayed glued to it. Bolstered by the sight of unmoving octopus, and the certainty that nothing, not even an octopus, could survive the journey from Japan to India chopped up and frozen, the slices— dipped in dark vinegar, and with a touch of wasabi— disappeared into my mouth.

It wasn’t bad actually. It’s not something somebody could eat every day, at least for people from these parts. But it’s not something sludgy and despicable that the ocean threw up either. As long as it isn’t alive, I suppose.

On our way back from dinner in the subway in New York, my companion, refusing to tell me what live octopus tasted like, had fallen silent. I thought he was struggling to keep his dinner down. As I started dozing off, I felt a slight nudge. It was him. “You know,” he said, “it reminded me of my ex-girlfriend. She had this habit of twirling her tongue in my mouth.”

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