Cooking Marea's "Fusilli: red wine braised octopus, bone marrow"

Every so often, you get the opportunity to experience something nearly incomprehensible.  Michael White, the chef at Marea in New York City, offers just such an experience in this dish, a purely decadent mixture of fusilli pasta, bone marrow, and baby octopus braised in a tomato purée and Sangiovese stock for over an hour.  The dish is almost unbearably good, and nearly every chef or food critic who came into contact with it last year proclaimed it one of the greatest things they'd ever eaten.  I wouldn't disagree — and so I decided to try to make it myself.

Because I don't have access to the variety of produce Mr. White undoubtedly has right at his fingertips, assembling the necessary ingredients took quite a bit of time.  The bone marrow wasn't terribly difficult because it could be kept frozen until ready for use, but the baby octopus needed to be fresh.  It took about two months finally to assemble everything, and then one Friday night it was time to give it a try.

So here we have the sauce: a 2006 Santa Cristina Sangiovese (the entire bottle), three cups of tomato purée, and a sprig of fresh basil, over a mirepoix.  Once this got to a simmer, the sliced baby octopus was added and allowed to braise gently for an hour.  As they cooked, the intense aroma of the sauce started to saturate the apartment.

Once the octopus was almost done, I cooked the fusilli to about a minute under al dente, and sautéed the bone marrow with salt, pepper, and thyme to begin the rendering process.  I then added the fusilli to the sauté pan, swirled to coat them with the marrow, and then started spooning the octopus and sauce over them.  A little fresh basil stirred in, and they were ready for plating, and a sprinkle of breadcrumbs on top finished the plate.

It wasn't a taste-for-taste match, but it was pretty fantastically good.  Mr. White's kitchen can surely pull off a more sophisticated version, but for two hours of cooking – and only about $30 worth of ingredients, all told — this made a pretty excellent Friday night dinner for two.

— C.