"This colorful meal includes whole wheat orzo, vegetables, and octopus. Prep is relatively easy. You can cook the orzo, saute the vegetables, and boil the octopus at the same time. Enjoy eating healthy."
1Place octopus in a pot and add enough water to cover; add red wine vinegar. Bring liquid to a boil, cover pot, reduce heat to medium, and simmer until a toothpick goes through the thickest part of the octopus smoothly, about 30 minutes. Remove octopus from pot and chop into bite-size pieces. Discard water-vinegar mixture.
2Combine orzo and chicken broth in a small pot over medium heat; allow orzo to absorb the chicken broth, adding more water, about 1 tablespoon at a time, if orzo gets too dry. Cook until orzo is tender yet firm to the bite, 5 to 8 minutes; drain.
3Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high heat; saute yellow bell pepper, mushrooms, and olives until tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Season bell pepper mixture with black pepper.
4Mix orzo, spinach, and octopus into bell pepper mixture until spinach begins to wilt from the heat of the orzo. Add lemon juice to orzo mixture; top with feta cheese.
Footnotes
Cook's Notes:
For this recipe I used 2 small pots and a large frying pan. Start with the octopus first as this takes the longest to cook. I boiled the octopus with red wine vinegar to tenderize it but choose whichever octopus tenderizing method you like most. Kalamata olives have a strong taste so make sure you like them before adding them to this dish. Go easy on the lemon. Squeeze a little, stir, taste, and then add more according to your liking. I didn't add extra salt because the chicken broth was salty enough. Hope these notes were helpful.