The Oscars were last week, and winner of Best Doc was My Octopus Teacher. I won’t lie… I got about 15 minutes in and stopped watching. I found myself rooting for the man and the octopus to fall in love, while simultaneously hoping things didn’t get weird, and the man and the octopus fall in love. It’s been a long year in lockdown, and I wasn’t ready to deal with those emotions.
But it got me thinking about my own Octopus teacher. The time I made Octopus.
My Friend Ayaka Kinugawa asked me to be on her show Ayaka’s Kitchen; the premise is the guest (me) makes something from their homeland (Malta) and Ayaka rolls it into sushi (fun)!
Before I go on, I have a confession. I am one of those rare people who doesn’t like sushi. Like beer, its smell makes me queasy. Am I a super-smeller? Maybe. But I really wanted to do this with Ayaka. So I thought, if I’m going to do it, I’m really going to do it. I’m going to make Stuffat Tal-Qarnit - Octopus Stew.
The first thing I had to do, was get an octopus.
Did you know when you clean an octopus, you basically have to turn it inside out?
Did you also know that finding more than one whole fresh octopus during a pandemic isn’t as easy as you might think? So seeing as this little guy wouldn’t be enough, I got some pre-cleaned frozen babies as well.
So why am I telling you this?
Because making this recipe, learning to roll sushi, being on Ayaka’s show all reminded me that cooking should be an adventure.
Does every meal have to be a Pirates of the Caribbean style romp to the briny deep? No. Sometimes you just gotta pound some nuggies. I get it. But sometimes I have to remind myself not to be scared to get NUTS in the kitchen!
This week was another one of those times. I awoke from a sound sleep and screamed “Why has no one invented peanut butter and jelly banana bread?!” Some quick googling informed me that many people had invented this exact thing, and a less adventurous Jan (with less time on her hands) may have just used one of these recipes. But this Jan set her sights on developing her own recipe for the first time.
Working from a banana cake recipe that I modified for myself during the great flour shortage of 2020, I lifted my anchor from the shore (my anchor is what I call my butt and the shore is the sofa) and hoisted my sails for the kitchen.
Waves of anxiety crashed upon me as I navigated the recipe. Hoping my calculations were correct enough to lead me to the warm shores of Loaf Island! After a tumultuous journey, I pulled my bounty out of the oven and the white whale of a perfect loaf had eluded me. She was a sunken treasure.
But a treasure none the less. For while she may not have looked pretty, she was delicious and now I know how to set my course so, next time, I don’t end up on rocky shores And there will be a next time. Call me Ishmael.
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