First of all, to prepare the seafood salad, clean the octopus, then remove the beak and leave it in cold water for about 30 minutes. Let’s now dedicate ourselves to cleaning the clams, place them in a bowl and cover them with cold water, add plenty of coarse salt and leave them in the water for about 2 hours.
While the clams are purging, let’s move on to cooking the octopus, take the celery and clean it by removing the leaves, then cut it into coarse pieces, then take the carrot and remove the ends, then cut it into coarse pieces.
We then take a tall, large pot and fill it with water, add the parsley, celery, carrot, a little vinegar, a little white wine and finally the bay leaves and bring everything to the boil.
When the water has reached the boil, add the octopus and cook it for approximately 40/50 minutes depending on the size, while it is cooking we dedicate ourselves to cleaning the mussels, with a fairly decisive and energetic movement we detach the white byssus that protrudes from the shell, once this is done we pass them under running water.
Clean the prawns
We then think about cleaning the prawns, remove the head, legs, tail, carapace and finally remove the intestine using a toothpick. Let’s then dedicate ourselves to cleaning the squid, divide the head from the body and eliminate the cartilage, fins and skin, finally cut it into not very thick rings.
At this point our octopus should be ready, let’s check the cooking using a toothpick, insert it into the heart and the octopus will be cooked if it is tender but still a little firm, then transfer it to cold water to let it cool as quickly as possible, like this it will not continue cooking.
Cook the fish:
We then cook the squid in the same pan as the octopus for about 5 minutes, also add the prawns and let them cook for about 1 minute, drain everything and cool under cold water.
We then take a large saucepan and brown a clove of garlic, then add the mussels and clams and cover the saucepan with a lid, cook everything on a fairly high heat for about 5 minutes.
After 5 minutes, drain the clams and mussels and open them, being careful to keep some for decoration. We then move on to cutting the octopus, cut the tentacles into small pieces of about 2 cm and transfer them into a bowl, then move on to the head, remove the entrails and also cut it into small pieces of about 2 cm and transfer everything into a large bowl .
Prepare the seasoning:
We then prepare the seasoning, take a large bowl and add about 150 g of oil and 30 g of lemon and the parsley, previously chopped.
We take the bowl with the octopus again and pour the shelled molluscs, squid, prawns inside and add the seasoning.
Our seafood salad is now ready to be served decorated with the whole shells of clams and mussels.