Octopus Char Siu - Chef Recipe by Mat Lindsay

Ingredients

Char siu is, of course, the great barbeque pork of Cantonese tradition, but its flavours work really well with octopus. This same method also marries nicely with the Ester spice marinade in place of the char siu marinade, in which case you'd boil some of the marinade down with the leftover cooking liquor until it's syrupy enough to use for basting.

280 g honey

Char siu marinade:

100 g red fermented bean curd (see note)
100 g salted soybeans (see note)
240mL light soy sauce
125mL Shaoxing wine
125mL hoisin sauce
240 g caster sugar
40 g garlic (about 8 cloves)
50 g five-spice powder

Method

For the marinade, blend everything together with a stick blender (or a regular blender) until smooth.

Reserve 200mL of the marinade to make a glaze, then coat the cooked and cooled octopus in the char siu marinade and refrigerate overnight or up to (but no more than) 24 hours to marinate.

The next day, mix the reserved marinade with the honey to make the glaze.

Heat a grill (wood-red or otherwise) to medium-high heat.

Without being too picky about it, clean off most of the marinade from the octopus, then cut into tentacles.

Drizzle with a little cooking oil, place sucker-side down on the grill and cook, without moving, until the skin starts colouring, about 2–3 minutes.

Flip the octopus, give it a generous baste with the glaze, then continue flipping and basting until the tentacles are crisp on all sides and highly caramelised, potentially even a little burnt on some edges.

Remove from the heat, give it all one final painting of the marinade and cool for just 2 minutes before eating.

Credits: Images and text from Ester by Mat Lindsay with Pat Nourse, photography by Patricia Niven. Murdoch Books RRP $55.00.

Photo Credits: Patricia Niven