Photos by Laurie Proffitt
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Lobster Chez Vous
Love lobster? Afraid to cook it at home? Go ahead and take the plunge. Bet you'll never order lobster in a restaurant again. By Nancy Ross Ryan
Lobster lovers have a peculiar blind spot: We will gladly pay prohibitive prices to tie on a bib and eat boiled lobster in a restaurant, the same lobster that we could cook -- for a fraction of the cost -- at home. Worse than the depreciation to our bank account is the deprivation to our table. Why not enjoy lobster at home, as often as we choose?
Heading the list of possible reasons for this strange reluctance is lack of information about purchasing and preparation. Live lobster (and it must be purchased live) is available at all reputable fishmongers and by mail. And as for preparation, boiling lobster is about as simple as cooking frozen peas.
Peas, however, are not alive, and they don't have claws. So, second on the list of why we don't enjoy lobster at home at least once a week is fear and squeamishness. Grabbing with your bare hands a crustacean equipped with claws capable of cracking a clam's shell, is fearsome enough. But dropping it, head first, into boiling water seems a tad primal. It may help to remember that everything we eat (vegetables included) was once alive. We don't have to slaughter our own steaks, behead our own chickens, hook our own sea bass, or cut our own broccoli (scientists claim it screams) from its stalk. But, if we are to don our bibs and dine chez nous on the king of crustaceans, we must dispatch our own lobster. The two ways of doing this will be addressed in Lobster 101.
When I say, lobster, I mean American or Maine lobsters, Homarus americanus, the kind with two claws, one large, one smaller. These are caught in cold waters off the Northern Atlantic Coast, mainly in New England and Canada. Europe has a similar lobster, Homarus vulgaris or Homarus gamarus, caught off the coasts of England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany and Norway. It may be just as delicious as Maine lobster, but the supply is so short that Europeans import American lobsters, rarely the reverse.
The major lobster wannabes among crustaceans are the rock or spiny lobsters. They are clawless and most of the meat comes from the tail. Some live in warm waters (Brazil, the Caribbean and Florida); some live in cold waters (Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.) Cold-water clawless lobsters are considered better. These may appear in live form in their local habitats, but rarely in our markets, where they are sold as frozen lobster tails.
What's the big difference? The difference between fresh Maine lobster and frozen lobster tails is roughly equivalent to the difference between fresh and frozen fish. As Jasper White writes in his cookbook (my gospel), Lobster at Home (Scribner, 1998), "As far as I am concerned, because of the superior taste and availability of American lobster, there is no competition between the different species -- American (and European) lobsters are in a class by themselves." White is a lobster guru. The chef graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, and for 12 years, owned and operated Jasper's in Boston, a fine-dining seafood restaurant where lobster was the most popular menu item. He not only cooked lobster classics such as boiled lobster, lobster Newburg, and lobster Thermidor, but invented such dishes as pan-roasted lobster, grilled lobster, lobster potpie and lobster pizza, recipes that appear in the cookbook. Today, White owns an entirely different kind of restaurant, the 12,000-square-foot Summer Shack in Cambridge, Mass. And he's still cooking lobsters, hundreds each week, all hoisted live from his 1,500-gallon lobster tank.
Lobster per person at a restaurant, runs around $20 per pound, and the average size is 1-1/2 to 2-plus pounds, or $30 to $45. Live lobster from a seafood market is about $13 a pound. Maybe adding hot water isn't such a big deal.
If you're going to take the plunge, make it easy and start with boiled lobster. Melted butter -- the best unsalted butter you can buy -- is the simplest possible sauce, just melt it and whisk in a little lemon juice. Clarified butter (melting the butter then pouring off the clear liquid, leaving the milk solids in the pan) has always seemed a little silly to me.
The adventuresome cook will always go one step beyond, so for recipes beyond boiling, consult Lobster at Home. Select your lobster carefully, according to the guidelines in Lobster 101, which also covers handling lobsters.
When ordering a lobster by mail, ask for hard shell lobsters that weigh between 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 pounds. They survive shipping better. And schedule delivery for the day you want to cook them, rather than try and keep them alive in the fridge.
Here is another instant method:
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Adapted from Lobster at Home, by Jasper White (Scribner, 1998)
Allow three quarts of water for every 1-1/2 to 2 pounds of lobster. (A 4-gallon pot with 3 gallon of water is ideal for cooking six 1-pound chicken lobsters, four 1-1/2 to 2 pound select lobsters, or two 2-1/2 to 3-pound jumbo lobsters. Use two pots if you have trouble bringing water to a boil in a large pot. Add 1/4 cup of kosher salt for every gallon of water. Pick up the lobsters, one by one, as described above, and drop them into the boiling water. Leave the pot uncovered while the lobsters cook. Time according to the chart below. Stir the lobsters once, halfway through the cooking. Use a pair of long-handled tongs to remove the lobsters when they are cooked. Boiling chart for fully cooked lobster: Adapted from Lobster at Home, by Jasper White (Scribner, 1998) To steam lobster in a microwave, you will need a 1-gallon plastic zippered freezer bag. Cut a lemon in half. Spear one lemon half on the head of the lobster (the rostrum or sharp, bony spike) will stick right in the lemon). The lemon flavors the steam and at the same time covers the rostrum thus preventing it from ripping a hole in the bag. Carefully place the lobster in the freezer bag, adding a few pieces of rockweed or, if no rockweed is available, 1/4 cup of water instead. Seal the bag and place on a plate in the microwave. Cook at the highest setting. Follow the chart for recommended cooking times. For lobsters over 2 pounds you will need a 2-gallon freezer bag. Since every microwave oven is a little different, you may need to adjust your cooking times accordingly. Microwave Steaming Chart for Lobster Special Tarragon Mayonnaise This recipe for homemade mayonnaise with tarragon in Lobster at Home, by Jasper White, is recommended as a sauce for chilled lobster. I even like this for dipping boiled lobster in. And you may take a shortcut by using the best quality prepared mayonnaise to start, and adding the additional ingredients to it. 1 large (pasteurized for food safety) egg yolk1. Place the egg yolk, mustard and tarragon in the bowl of a food processor. Put the lid on and pulse the machine for a few seconds to blend the ingredients. 2. With the machine on, add half the oil by pouring it in at a slow but steady speed. Alternate the last half of the oil with the lemon juice until both are incorporated. 3. Add the ice water and pulse for a few seconds. Season to taste with salt, pepper and cayenne. Pulse. Store, covered, refrigerated. 4. To make this a sauce for chilled lobster, add 2 tablespoons heavy cream for each 1/2 cup of mayonnaise. One tablespoon freshly chopped Italian parsley tastes good with any of the following added ingredients: chopped cooked roe (2 tablespoons per 1/2 cup); finely diced tomato (4 tablespoons per 1/2 cup); or chopped hard-boiled egg (1 egg per 1/2 cup). |
GOURMET ISSUE -- May 2001