No fair or market worth its salt in Galicia does not have at least one stall where this mouth-watering dish is prepared. Here, the octopuses are cooked in huge copper pots and are then chopped up and served on wooden plates.

To prepare this dish at home, buy a fresh or frozen octopus. If the octopus is fresh it has to be pounded with a wooden mallet until it becomes softer. Then clean it and turn the head round.

Boil water in a copper pot containing a peeled onion and then quickly submerge the octopus three times until it curls up. Leave it to cook for fifty minutes.

Once cooked, take it out and chop it into small pieces while it is still hot. Serve the pieces on a wooden plate and sprinkle with rock salt, virgin olive oil and paprika.

Boiled potatoes (cachelos), cooked in the same water as the octopus, make the perfect accompaniment.

If you don't have a copper pot, do what they do in the villages of Galicia and put a piece of copper in the saucepan.