Maltese Aljotta (fish soup) with a Charred octopus salad

everybody Welcome to my kitchen today going to be making two dishes alota and I’m going to make an octopus salad okay um pretty much I’ve prepared all the ingredients to try and make this go as fast as possible for everybody um so anyway what I’m going to do is I’m going to start with the alota while I’m doing that I’ll discuss what I’ve done with the octopus and how prepared it for the salad and what I’m going to do is save some uh to make octopus Ste with during the week as well okay so I I’ll get in detail about the preparation everything I’ve done as we go okay so the alota what I’ve done is I got fish stock which I bought um a prepackaged uh liquid fish stock I couldn’t find fish cubes for some unknown reason today anyway it doesn’t matter so I’ve done that and I’ve added some vegetar stock and I’ve also added um some hot water to it to dissolve everything so that’s my stock I’ll probably add another l a half a lit of water as we go along all right so the OTA what we have to do do with the onions and some butter we’re going to do some sautéing obviously uh some garlic um alot is a very very garlicky dish okay so this is fresh garlic powerful as so there you don’t think there’s a lot there but there actually is um we use some fresh meat which I’ve chopped up already and also uh some beautiful herbs which is parsley which is my favorite herb of all time okay um with the fish I went to my fish manger today told them what I wanted um I’ve used part of the octopus body okay to to make a bit of the flavor going into the stock I’ve kept the fish head that’s going to work it’s work hard now the fish frame as well it’s complete and what I’m going to do with that as it steams out after it’s steamed out I’m going to remove some of the um flesh out of it and I’m going to put it into the soup dish itself okay so but we need we need all the ugly bits in there it just has to happen we want the flavor to come through I know we have fish stock but it can’t resemble what we’re going to do right now okay um and what I’m going to do the soup is meant to be very brothy okay but what I like to do is me being me it’s not going to be like um uh some kind of broader or something it’s going to be a dish where it’s going to be very nice and brothy with the rice in it and the Tomato uh but I’m going to add a couple of ingredients in there just just for appearance you know just to put in the plate put on the bowl and have a nice porn sitting in there and some octopus pieces I’ve cut up as well it’s going to be a very delicate soup and I’m I’m going to keep it that way I am still following um authentic mul tradition um the any addition is um as I’ve changed a few ingredients I’m not going to put ugly fish frames in there for you guys to see I’m not going to put lobster tails in there or prawn heads or that kind of garbage that you want the flavor out of the fish do should be able to help you with all that as well okay so I’m avoiding all the bad ugly stuff that we saw as kids growing up I hated seeing this cooked as I grow up I hated the smell in the house and I hat of the taste of it okay I’m trying to change your change your guys opinions on we’re going to put a good smell back into the kitchen again okay and we’re going to have a really really nice dish okay which you not have to see the ugly bits okay so anyway this pot’s almost heated up um so what I’m going to do is I’m going to start with uh some butter and some onion I’m going to sauté it’s just a typical brand onion of um chopped diced all the onion nice and fine okay uh that will Rend it down in size as it goes along through it’s 30 minutes simmer okay so we’re going to put that in right now and we’re going to start the simmer process and then what we’ll do is uh once we’ve got some of the ingredients in which I’ll explain as we go I fa a chopper knife I might turn this fan up so you can guys see what’s actually going on here and the heat down a little bit now the top nice and hot oh yeah that’s already [Music] happening Okay so we’ve got the the sweetness of the onion happening in the bottom of the poter already and I’ve R The Hop back just a little bit um all the recipes that I found they usually like to use olive oil I’m a butterf freak um I’ll use butter butter in replace of olive oil um providing that you don’t um raise to a temperature too high to burn the butter and the same thing happens with olive oil as well they actually go hand in hand and quite well together um in s many things but um trying to keep things leaning and going on I’m just going to S with the butter it’s what I’ve always done okay so that’s all sautéing nicely there now really nicely so we’re going to throw in some herbs I’ve got the garlic which I’m going to put in about a minute before I put the stock in you should never cook the garlic at the same rate as you cooked the onion this will burn off put a bad tast for your uh bad taste for your whole dish seriously you don’t want that okay trust me that’ll take 5 Seconds sauté um and then put it in just before you put your stock in okay so what we’re going to do now is we’re going to put in a beautiful mint okay which I’ve diced up really nicely and that’ll sauté nicely in the bom okay I’ve also got some parsley uh my favorite herb of all time which is going to go into the sauté pot as well and we’re going to stir that around now we need to remember we don’t have to sauté this till the soft ads but because it actually is going to go in uh to the dish with some stock and it’s going to sit there um simmering away for a long time okay now you can see there now this is all quite hot let me get myself a few gloves we go all right so we’re just basically simmering away there okay which is nice okay um by the world the oh that smells great you can smell the mint coming right out of all that right now okay so what I’m going to do now is I’m going to actually um toss in the garlic so the the longest part of this dish is the simmer which goes for about 30 minutes um I’m not going to show you that I’ll just show you what the end um result is after I’ve got as far as I can before the lengthy simmer process okay so that’s all going in now now after B in that octopus for 45 minutes I’m telling you now the kitchen smells a whole better I smell like a garbage dump before when I was when I was boiling up the um the octopus okay so I’m glad to have this smell back in the kitchen again trust me okay so that oh it smells great okay so that’s all happening there now I’m running a little bit low on butter there you see the onions absorbed it all in says of egge so I’m just going to put a SPO water in there to get the sauté happening a lot better okay and that’s happening quite ni nicely all right just a small amount more time more and will be good about 5 minutes there’s what it takes to saut and onion um on a medium heat okay on a high heat all you’re going to do is burn it on a low heat there you’re just going to soften it up it will just take it twice as long all right I prefer the low heat process you know a good 10 minute sauté uh we don’t have time for this and that’s some M kitchen I just want to get the food out um anyway so here we are now we got that process there pretty good we’re going to throw in so I bought some frawns deined them deshell them I’m just going to toss them in um some of the octopus that I bought earlier on was a large octopus um I’ve just basically uh just uh slice them down with the nice thin um sectors and that should be pretty nice as well in the dish um and that’s going to be the whole hardiness of the dish right there there’s not much else to go in apart from the rice and after the fish has steamed and all the juices have gone through the stock um of the soup I will take some of the meat out of the fish itself discard the head discard the tail and and the octopus pieces the other pieces there um but I’ll use a little bit of the flesh out of that to um add uh bring some more body into the soup okay so that’s coming out nicely as well all right so pretty much we ready to throw our stocking okay I’m going to throw a little bit there cuz there’s still something else to add that we need to do so we’re going to use canned peel tomatoes whole okay now I need to chop these down a little bit I’m going to use a uh AA a VMA okay um what I’m going to do now is I’m going to sit there and just uh easily chop those beautiful R of tomatoes up out of that can okay dice them out a little bit I’ve got a little bit stock happening down there I’ve done that to stop the onion uh from burning while I’m talking to you okay and that’s looking Grand already okay I’ll show you in a moment if you can’t see it all okay so that’s happening there is there we’re going to get these tomatoes in which have uh just diced up now in the pot it goes okay and I’ve got to feel in a is you see no we good with the burner going to put that back on full Heat going to stir those tomatoes in whoops I never said I wasn’t a messy cook by the way all right okay that’s looking great okay so this stock is going to quite well it’s all straight away um and what I’m going to do is I’m going to take advantage of all the conser I’ve got that tomato in and I’m going to use that so make it complete 1.5 L of stock including the fish stock and the vegetar stock I just made earlier okay so that’s the basis of our soup right there we let this come up to a simmer okay so we have the fish here now ordinarily you would put this into a muslin you would tie a knot in it and plunk it in like a tea bag into the stock and let it just Sim it away for half an hour and do its thing um but this is the method my parents have used and it’s a method that I will use all the time it just makes it easy to pick out what you want to use out of the fish to put it into the body of the soup uh when you serving it up okay so um man I’ve seen some ugly Cuts go into these Subs when I was growing up I used to go fishing with my dad when I was a kid up Brooklyn in New South Wales barera Waters and we used to keep all the fish we used to catch and I used to love catching fish but I used to hate coming home knowing they was going to cook all y time okay as we grow up our taste bu change dramatically um I’ve been pining for this just for a long time just to bring bring back a little bit of my uh childhood just to taste it again to say yeah I remember having that in the family okay so that’s going to sit over the top and steam okay so what we’re going to do is grab a bit of stock through it that’s going to steam out and then we’re going to get the rest of stock in as it comes up to the boil that’s going to be one beautiful soup okay and I’ll show you in a second I’ll pull the fish frames back out and I’ll show you what the stock looks like B more prepared today I didn’t want the dirty kitchen like I had last time uh when I did that cook up with the fet Chini I’m not going to go there again I want to try and keep it TI of kitchen okay so anyway hope you can see guys but this is pretty much what I’ve built up you can see that clearly okay I’ve built up a really nice dock uh with lots of herbs in there the garlic the onion um it’s just going to present itself beautifully got some octopus Cuts in there and the prawns uh raw by the way down put Cooks in there they just they just turn it into the chewing G by the time it’s when it okay so we’re going to do that we need to put a lid on that so it does steam okay you don’t need a steamer for this as I said this is a process that my parents used and it’s worked time and time again so I find the lid for this sorry so that takes about uh half an hour for that to steam the fish the juice comes out of the fish drops into the soup um this is a full cup of rice but I’m going to add about half a cup of rice um after about half an hour hopefully there’s still enough stock in there I might have to add a little bit of water I don’t know but half a cup of the rice is about equivalent uh that you would use for about 1 and 1/2 L of stock which is exactly what I’ve got in there okay so half of that will go into there um straight after about 20 minute simmer and then once the rice is cooked the dish is cooked and it’s about getting the fish meat out and resumming in the soup a little blocked up so right so we got our alot on our fish soup on that’s all happening um and then what I’ve done a little bit earlier on is I bought a full octopus a large octopus a really large one and I boiled it uh for a good 45 minutes possibly an hour um it’s tender as and then what I’ve done to get all the skin off it okay that’s the that’s the body there to get the skin off it is just to make it look uh more pleasant when you eat it there’s nothing wrong with feing the skin at all uh but what you do once it’s boiled and it cools down you just wash it and the red the black skin will just peel straight off it no need to get it all off it’s just an aing just there for looks and presentation okay so I’ve done that so I’ll chop some of this down now and I’ll cyc in olive oil and then I’ll get it ready for the grill okay um alongside of that what I’ve done is I’ve gone to the local shopping Village and I picked up some um some Garden ve uh Garden leaves okay some bitter leaves and a variety of leaves in in a bag I’ve just chopped up some tomatoes in there which are in there okay um I have an onion for the final server uh the lemon for the final server okay I’ve got some uh if you can see in there okay I’ve got some Spanish onion I’ve got some Capers I’ve got some mixed olives in there I’ve got some beautiful olives today so I’ve got black olives calamas and I’ve got some beautiful green olives as well okay they’ll go into the salad as as well as the Char World octopus okay so that’s what’s happening there and I’m also going to um thr some feder into the mix as well fed’s beautiful and then I’ll drizzle the entire salad of an olive oil and we’ll present it on a plate and you’ll see how good it’ll look okay it’ll be Dr everybody this is part two of my alota and my octopus dish uh salad so what I’ve done now is uh just to let you know what I’ve done is done the process of uh putting the rice into the stock now that has simed away for about 15 minutes now the rice is nice and soft this is ready to serve up uh just before I put this video back on again I removed the meat out of the fish and I dropped it into the stock itself uh to to give it some texture and some body and some more flavor into the soup we have to remember this is a Broly dish it’s more so than a chunky hearty dish okay so I’ve done this quite well and I’ll just show you what I’ve done if you can see that there so that’s what to the fish and the prawns and what else I put in there the octopus I stripped the meat off I was taken the skin off the fish um I’ve used the flesh itself and I stripped it down into um almost like tuna fillets and dropped them in the soup okay so that’s done so just guard that we finished all that the AL yog itself is here it’s ready to go and that looks fantastic all right I’m not saying that cuz I cooked it but I’m just I’m just so impressed with the dish itself look how good that’s coming out okay so this could probably realistically I probably put another um half a liter of water in this dish um and make more stock and it would you wouldn’t have to add any flavor into it it would just stock up really nice uh but right here right now I’m just serving what’s coming straight out of the bowl and you can see there I got fish flake through it hopefully you can see it all fish PL through it there couple of prawns that I’ve chucked in okay and I’m going to use some of the stock over the top now to make it more of a broth I’m telling you what guys I’ve about done myself today and a little bit of garnish here ladies and gentlemen that’s alot okay from the Andrew’s kitchen okay it’s very good to go trust me it’ll taste nice that’s done there as you can see the pot has slimed out a little bit uh as a rice has absorbed all the um all the stock half a L of water back in that again put it back on a slow simmer to heat up the water again and just keep serving it up to everybody else okay so that’s one dish done which I’m very very proud of right now um I don’t think I’ve ever tried to cook it once myself oh I’m doing going by is what I’ve seen my parents do and I follow that tradition um it might have taken 30 plus years for me to do so but I got there okay so that’s done the octopus salad so I finally chared all the octopus and I wrapped it in for the salad and I also thre some feter cheese in there as well um while you were gone I tasted some very very nice uh Woodfired bread and there’s my salad right there octopus salad uh with some massive siiz croutons all right now that’s restaurant quality straight up there that’s going to taste fantastic the octopus will probably render in to nothing uh you won’t need too to that octopus trust me all right so that’s another dish made there now the leftover Rocky which I’ve got plenty of um I’m going to I’m going to attempt a dish of um which I’ve made before a few times before cuz I don’t mind it is octopus stew okay and that’ll be my next uh uh next clip I’ll be making for you guys um Andrew’s kitchen what can I say octopus salad alot uh traditional alot by the way octopus salad Mediterranean style um I hope you enjoyed what you’ve seen today take care good luck God bless