During the last week I’ve been trying as hard as I can to get through everything in my freezer in preparation for moving out. I’ve done pretty well - by last night all that was left was a bad of frozen sweetcorn and an octopus. The sweetcorn can go - no one can eat that much in three days -  but I thought it would be a shame to waste the octopus.

The problem was I’d not had much luck with octopus before. This one was one of a pair. I’d had the other back in February and it was something of a disaster. I tried to tempura batter it but the batter fell off and sweet chilli sauce didn’t really work with it. I’d expected it to taste like squid but it is much more meaty!

I needed inspiration on how to cook it. Fortunately, Gaynor on the BBC food boards came to my rescue with a great idea of simmering the octopus in red wine, tomato, garlic, chilli  and cognac.

It tasted very good indeed ,although I overdid the chilli a bit. But the best thing about this is, you can’t see it is octopus.

Not a tentacle in sight. This is the way to introduce squeamish eaters to new things! Hide iit in a richly coloured sauce!  You could probably convince them it was chicken until they’d taken a couple of bites.  I’m sure most red meat eaters would like the flavour. I thought about trying this on my “no fins or wings” housemate but he’d already seen me cutting its legs off. I don’t think he was too impressed. Never mind, I’ll try it another time!