Holiday Lobstercide, In Two Parts

As you might have noticed, over the holidays I've allowed myself a nice, leisurely three weeks away from blogging. In my own defense: no, I have not taken three weeks off from everything else. Life has continued at its usual clip, with the added excitement of much packing and unpacking, present wrapping and unwrapping, plus a blizzard thrown in for good measure.

Instead of sitting at home with my feet up in front of a roaring fire on December 27 -- the night after the blizzard hit New York -- I was fighting an old man over an egg salad sandwich, one of the few items of food remaining in the British Airways terminal, which 36 hours after the first snow began to fall was beginning to resemble the Superdome. Then I was curled up around my duffel bag on the terminal floor, with a sock over my eyes as a makeshift sleep mask. But then again, once the plane finally took off I ended up spending the ensuing week in England, Bruges, and Paris, so I don't expect you to pity me.

Life would have gotten back to normal when I returned to a nearly snow-free New York on 1/3 were it not for my and The Viking's birthdays taking place back to back on the 11th and 12th of January. Frankly, I really don't consider 1/1 to be the start of my new year, because it's just impossible to turn over a new leaf with the prospect of further celebration staring you right in the face.

Anyway, now I'm back on the straight and narrow, and am making an effort to wean myself off a diet of triple cream cheese, foie gras, beer, butter, and pork everything in favor of fat free Greek yogurt, vegetable soups, and roasted fishes.

But getting back to the culinary excesses...

I'm a not usually a big lobster eater, but I happened cook with lobster twice in December, and in two dishes that I'm proud of.

The first dish was a lobster bisque, one which has been described to me in vivid and almost mythological terms by The Viking for most of the length of our relationship. As the story goes, The Viking journeyed far, far north in the British Isles in the dead of winter, to a place where it was dark 23 hours a day and bone-chilling winds blew off the North Sea, until he arrived at the family home of his friend The Scotsman. There the Scotsman's mother served them steaming, fragrant, buttery bowls of lobster bisque. "The best lobster bisque," I have been told. "In existence."

I attempted this bisque once before (I had asked The Scotsman's mother for the recipe) in December of 2008, and it was by all accounts a failure. It looked nice enough, exactly that inviting coral color that a lobster bisque should be, but was watery and insipid. I knew the instant that I tasted it that I had stopped the stock too soon -- the key to a great bisque turns out to be reducing your lobster stock down until it is ruddy and pungent.

This year, I decided it was time for a retry, and managed to produce a much better bowl of soup. I don't know that it reached the epic heights of the Scotsman's mother's creation, but I was satisfied with the result.


My second lobster experience came on Christmas Eve, which I spent at home with my family as I do every year. I knew I wanted to do something with lobster for dinner but couldn't find a recipe that exactly fit the bill. So, I came up with a pasta dish that combines tarragon, cream, and sherry -- all classic lobster pairings -- plus fennel, which I think gives the dish a fresh, interesting twist. It took me about three hours to make, start to finish.

Here's the thing about these two recipes: you absolutely need to start with whole, live lobsters. Not just fresh or frozen tails. To say nothing of the quality of the meat, you need the lobster bodies and shells to make the stock with, which is what gives the bisque and the creamy pasta sauce their powerful, permeating lobster flavor.

You tell people that you're making a lobster dish, yes, using live lobsters, and that yes, you're going to kill the lobsters, and they look at you like you're Charles Manson. The horror! How ghastly! I'll just about take this from vegans, who are apparently so troubled by the idea of harming innocent creatures that they have made a lifelong choice not to do so (although, they might consider moving out of the United States and to somewhere like Switzerland if that's their philosophy)...but my pork-loving, supermarket-chicken-eating, meataholic friends? Where do they think lamb loin comes from? What, exactly, does the ground veal in their Bolognese represent?

To my mind, if you're going to be a carnivore, I think it's only responsible to participate in the killing of your own food every so often. But that's just me.


Christmas Eve Lobster Pasta

Serves 6-8

4 1.5-lb lobsters
3 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup shallots, finely chopped
1/2 bulb fennel, chopped
1/2 bulb fennel, separated into individual leaves
3 Tbsp Cognac
2 sprigs Tarragon leaves, plus 1 Tbsp chopped Tarragon
2 cups white wine
4 Tbsp flour
4 Tbsp butter
1 cup cream
Splash sherry

1. Bring a pot of water to boil. Drop lobsters in one at a time, for 1-2 minutes each. Let lobsters cool and separate claws, bodies, and tails (reserving juices that escape). Return tails to boiling water for 7 minutes, then return claws for 10 minutes. Extract meat and chop into big chunks. Reserve shells, meat, and 1 cup of lobster water.

2. Heat olive oil in a large, heavy bottomed saucepan or small stock pot. Add shallots and fennel and saute over medium heat until soft. Add lobster shells and the accumulated juices, douse with Cognac, and ignite. Once the flames have burned out, add white wine, lobster water, and tarragon sprigs. Simmer until reduced to about 1 - 1.5 cups, around 1 hour. Strain in fine sieve and reserve.
4. Meanwhile, drop fennel leaves in boiling water for 5-7 minutes, until fork tender. Drain. Lay leaves flat on cookie sheet and brush with olive oil. Bake at 400 until leaves are golden colored and crisp. Remove from oven and reserve.
3. In a medium saucepan, heat butter over medium heat until foaming. Add flour and stir until paste forms, gradually whisking in lobster stock (and stirring continuously) until thick sauce is formed. Add in cream to desired consistency, then sherry, salt, and pepper to taste. Add lobster chunks and stir.

Serve over pasta (fettuccine or spaghetti), and top with caramelized fennel and chopped tarragon.