FEATURE
TEXT
KATY FENTRESS
PHOTOS
LORENZO MELISSARI
At the coast, women
beating octopus
on the rocks to
tenderise the meat is
a familiar sight
Seafood is fast catching the
imagination of the Nairobi foodie
generation and new and exciting
establishments are sprouting up to
meet the growing demand.
“I really hated octopus the first
time I tried it,” confides Amal.
“It was super rubbery and I just
didn’t get it! Then one day a friend
convinced me to try some at a stall
near the Likoni ferry in Mombasa
and I got hooked!”
Where once octopus was viewed
with suspicion by Nairobians,
who preferred the familiarity of a
white fish fillet, these cephalopod
creatures are slowly making their
way onto the menus of the capital’s
restaurants.
“Red snapper is an obvious
favourite,” says Dario Aloisio, group
executive chef at the Mediterraneo
chain of restaurants. “However, the
Indian Ocean is full of octopus and
with so many foodies crazy about it,
people are beginning to catch on.”
Unless you got particularly excited
when watching the Korean film
Oldboy - in which the protagonist,
Oh Dae-su (Choi min-sik) orders a
live octopus at a sushi restaurant
and proceeds to tear it apart with
his teeth, you would be forgiven
for thinking octopus is the stuff of
nightmares. Whereas a fish fillet
can be viewed as a white steak, the
octopus’s tentacles and beak give
the creature a positively alien look.
When cooked properly, the taste
of octopus is far similar to that of
land creatures than other seafood.
While oysters taste like the ocean
and red snapper is soft and flaky,
octopus tastes pretty much like
white meat. Which might be the
secret behind its gradual rise in
popularity.
The main challenge when
preparing octopus is to prevent it
from becoming hard and rubbery. In
North Coast, women beating octopus
on the rocks to tenderise the meat is
a familiar sight. Some times though,
a thorough beating just isn’t enough.
Here in Nairobi, chef’s opinions as
to how to cook the beast to tender
perfection vary. While the Executive
Chef at Seven restaurant Kiran Jethwa strongly believes that the secret
is to boil it in a solution of water, red
wine, vinegar and lemon juice, Chef
Dario swears that the best way is to
blanch it in boiling water for about
fifteen minutes and then let it cool
in the pot for two hours.
Kenyan octopus fishing methods
are fairly sustainable as there is a
limit to how many octopods one
lone fisherman can collect. However,
while the amount of octopus
consumed here in Kenya doesn’t
impact on the local stocks, the risk
for depletion is nonetheless very
real.
“Large suppliers are buying up as
much as they can for export to Asia
and Europe and eventually there will
be none left for us,” Chef Kiran says.
Chef Dario agrees: “With regards
to octopus, squid and red snapper,
we are still pretty safe here in
Kenya. There are a lot of big
companies however that are buying
up all the fish at the coast for international export and this might
prove problematic down the line.”
When she goes out for dinner
tonight, Amal might order red
snapper or if she dares, octopus
again, but certainly no tuna or
marlin. Like the local chefs, she
knows that the new seafood craze
happening here and all around the
world is not sustainable.That said,
the rise in appetite for seafood
shows that from the healthy to the
adventurous, Nairobians have been
stung by a foodie bug, the effects of
which show no signs of abating.
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