Grilled baby octopus with brown butter hummus and chilli jam from Arkhé, Adelaide

If you’ve ever tried barbecuing octopus and ended up with something resembling a chewy shoe, chef Jake Kellie has a tip for you. “Marinating it first is a really important process to get that tenderisation,” he says of cooking the famously challenging cephalopod.

For this dish, the co-owner and executive chef of Arkhé (arkhe.com.au) uses baby octopus from Port Lincoln. He makes garum – a fermented sauce containing koji – with their heads, while the rest is given a couple of days to marinate in a combination of olive oil, herbs and spices that adds flavour and almost guarantees it’ll be tender after cooking.

From there, this delicately textured but powerfully tasty dish goes through a few cheffy steps that might be best left to the professionals. Kellie and his team cook the octopus en papillote (wrapped loosely but securely in foil) over high-heat coals “until it blows up like a UFO”. That helps steam the tentacles into a delicate softness. It’s then given a flash on the grill to crisp up the edges before being placed on top of a brown butter hummus that hums with confit garlic and cumin, along with a vinegar-led chilli jam for a shiver of acidity. The whole thing’s presented without fuss or garnish in a dark and luscious tangle.

The Arkhé team powers through about 25 to 30 kilograms of occy every week and Kellie reckons it’s the combination of flavours that hits the spot: the richness of the octopus, the earthiness of the hummus and the vibrant cut-through of the chilli jam. Even the octopus-averse seem to come around when they try it. “I think it would convert anyone,” says Kellie. “I expect it’ll be on the menu for a long time.”