Braised Octopus With Chorizo and Yuca Mash

saturday, april 19th, 2008

 
One of the first things I did when I moved to Seattle was sign up to volunteer at the Seattle Aquarium. It was not as if I woke up one morning and said to myself, I simply must begin working with sea cucumbers today, instead, I sort of stumbled upon my stint as a docent. It was the aquarium's position on the downtown waterfront, a few blocks from Pike Place Market and steps away from a covered outdoor shack that served what I still consider to be the world's best fish and chips, that led me to its door.

For the first month or so after I relocated, I lugged around the heavy burden of perpetual homesickness. I missed my friends and family and often questioned why I moved to a place that was undeniably beautiful but afforded me nothing in terms of friendship and community. During those first lonely weeks, I discovered that one of the few places that could vanquish my homesickness and remind me of why I made the move was the perpetually bustling fish and chips shop. I knew no one when I moved to Seattle besides a friend who was consulting out of state and on my days off from a new job, I would wander to the waterfront alone, order a basket of perfectly fried halibut, not too greasy, not too dry, served with golden steak fries along with the requisite microbrew, the charms of which one inevitably succumbs to as a Seattle resident. Paper basket of sunny goodness in one hand, winsome bottle of beer in the other, I would settle into a spot at one of the communal tables in the outdoor seating area that jutted out over Puget Sound.

Perhaps it was the communal tables that made me feel a part of a social scene, even if none of the tourists actually cared that I was there, or it could have been the gentle glide of the ferry boats pulling into harbour as they shuttled people back and forth from Bainbridge Island, their confident bellows indicating that all was secure as they pulled safely into shore. It might have been the view. Nothing quite compares to licking greasy salt off your fingers then cleansing the palette with a malty chestnut colored beer while enjoying the theatre of the Olympic Mountains looming above the Sound in one direction and the imposing majesty of Mount Rainier floating over the clouds in the other. I'm not quite sure what kept drawing me back day after day to that fish and chips shop but it comforted me somehow and while I would later view it as a place that only the tourists visited, I was always grateful to it for getting me through those first few terrible weeks.

However, no matter how idyllic my little wind swept restaurant was, there is a limit to the amount of comfort a basket of fried fish can deliver. On perhaps day twelve or fifteen of my visit to the chip shop, I decided I needed to venture out beyond the reaches of its salty embrace. I wandered down the waterfront, first stopping into Elliot's for a blackberry margarita that will always hold a special place in my heart, even if its frozen purply goodness left an ice cream headache in its wake, and eventually ducked into the Seattle Aquarium.

I've always loved aquariums. There's nothing like the cosmic silence that descends upon a blackened room as phosphorescent jelly fish glide in unequalled grace through the silky stillness of the water, or the thrill that does not diminish with age of spotting a black tip reef shark zip by in pursuit of its next meal. I wandered around for a few hours before stopping at their largest exhibit, an aquarium of coral housing all manner of creatures native to Puget Sound, but it wasn't the sea cucumbers or sunflower starfish that stopped me in my tracks, it was the scuba diver scrubbing the (fake plaster) coral that intrigued me.

How does one become an aquarium scuba diver I wondered? And where can I sign up? I waited to talk to the diver, a guy named Cliff, who chatted me up with his regulator hanging over his shoulder and hot pink air tank still strapped to his back. Apparently, the diving positions were the most coveted volunteer positions at the aquarium and if I was interested, I would have to sign up at the very end of a rather long waiting list. He wanted to know if I was certified. "No," I replied sheepishly. Was I interested in volunteering in another capacity? "I guess so," was my rather reluctant response. And that is how, in the course of an afternoon, I signed up for an orientation to volunteer at the aquarium as well as PADI courses to get my diving certification because, as it turned out, Cliff not only held one of the coveted diving positions, but was also a scuba instructor.

I never did land a position as a volunteer diver. Instead, after a multi-week orientation course, I learned everything I ever (and never) wanted to know and much, much more about jelly propulsion, cnidaria, anthropoda, annelidas and every other thing that falls into the realm of sea pens, zoanthids, pencil urchins and purple fan worms, to name but a few. One of the guys in my class was fascinated by this stuff and while he always spoke much more enthusiastically than I knew I ever would about the differences between a pink-tipped anemone and a cannonball jelly fish (he would of course never use their common names and referred to them instead as the Cnidaria species that they were), we became fast friends. I suppose I felt honored that he accepted me even though I looked at my instructor with glassy, dumbfounded eyes when he asked me to name three species form the Echinodermata genus.
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