Octopus daube

I learned this dish from the gifted food writer Richard Olney, when visiting him one winter. We were marooned in his house, up in the hills of Provence, for several days because of a heavy snowfall. We made pasta; there were root vegetables in the cellar, a supply of cheeses and saucisson sec — and Richard had an octopus in the freezer. The freezer is a good place to keep an octopus for a short period, because freezing tenderises the flesh. If you buy a fresh one, freeze it for a couple of