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.

Braised Fish. Yes, Braised.

Yesterday, I had the unpleasant experience of coming face to face with my fall calendar. It was not pretty.

What is on the calender: work events galore, meetings with people that I successfully avoided all summer, weekend travel, everyone's wedding, the safe assumption that I will mostly not get home from work at reasonable hours, and house guests that, quite understandably, would rather do just about anything than have a homemade meal on their trip to New York City.

What is not on the calendar: cooking; quiet moments for blogging.

Ahhh. So this must be what everyone else's schedule looks like.

For the next couple of months, I predict a shortage of posts about do-it-yourself kitchen nerdery (making your own ricotta, carbonating water at home) and a wealth of information about clever new ways to feed yourself when you wind up with no time, mental energy, ambition, nor creativity.

...which is an apt segue into last night's dinner.

The first step towards making last night's dinner was talking myself into actually cooking dinner at all, as opposed to ordering takeout or eating a meal consisting of slightly expired cheddar, a Corona Light, and chocolate chip cookies. It turned out to be the right decision. I made the full meal in under an hour (which included some faffing around with laundry, channel surfing, and the like) and here's what I cooked:



-Tomato salad with fennel and feta: A reminder that a quick dinner doesn't have to be unsightly. I sliced the fennel and tomatoes that came in my CSA box and topped them with leftover crumbled feta, olive oil, rice wine vinegar, salt, and pepper. I took two extra minutes to think about presentation and ended up with something that I might actually serve to guests.



-Braised arctic char with lemon rosemary vinaigrette: the marriage of two things you probably never think to do, namely 1) use a vinaigrette on a protein and 2) braise a fish. I highly recommend both. Somewhere along the line vinaigrettes got pigeon-holed into the salad category, but they are so, so much better than that. A vinaigrette can make a versatile sauce as well as a braising medium. How to do it: sear the fish skin side down in an oiled pan over medium heat for 3 minutes, take it out of the pan, add vinaigrette (a cup or less), replace the fish skin side up, and let it sit in the simmering vinaigrette for about three minutes. Keep spooning the liquid over the fish as it cooks. Last night I used lemon rosemary vinaigrette (minced lemon rind, minced rosemary, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, and olive oil) but any kind of vinaigrette will do. I hesitate to call this way of preparing fish "idiot proof," but it's as close as they come.

-Brown rice: Nothing fancy here, just simple brown rice with some salt and olive oil. Always keep brown rice on hand for just these types of occasions. It's healthy and heats up well the next day for leftovers.

No Ifs, Ands, Or Halibuts

Meet Exhibit A: the red snapper that I bought for dinner with my brother and his wife this past weekend. Unbeknownst to me at the time, red snapper populations are at very low levels due to overfishing and it's best not to eat them. Note Red's expression here: bored, annoyed, put-upon. Watching, judging. All this, and I haven't even done a terrible job at grilling him yet.

The trouble with eating is that almost anything you put in your mouth these days is problematic in one way or another. If the food isn't unhealthy (artery-hardening; cancer-causing; diabetes-inducing), it's unethically grown (cruelly raised; brutally slaughtered), grown or processed in an environmentally harmful way (water-intensive; petroleum-guzzling; toxic in its byproducts), or unsustainably hunted (devastating to wild populations).

After I read all of Michael Pollan's books last year, it appeared that in order to eat with a clean conscience I should stick to a diet of barnacles, forest weeds, pond scum, and wild fish.

Now, a few new books on fish and fishing have hit the shelves and spawned (pun intended) interesting reviews by the likes of Sam Sifton and Elizabeth Kolbert in the New York Times and New Yorker respectively. To make a long story short, it appears that wild fish are off the "safe" list too.

I recommend reading the reviews for the full story, but here's the summary version:

1. The history of commercial fishery is one of progressively working our way though various fish species once thought too numerous to be harmed, fishing them to the brink of extinction, and then moving on to the next one.

2. At the current time we've all but obliterated wild populations of most any fish you can think to eat -- this is surprising given that fish are one of few things which Americans are encouraged to eat more of.

3. Farmed fish isn't necessarily a solution, because farmed fish are fed wild fish (is this not mind-bogglingly backward?), and the farms themselves often pollute natural fish populations/habitats.
Unfortunately none of the authors goes so far as to suggest a solution to this sad state of affairs, they just leave you feeling like a nasty, awful, greedy person for eating fish.

But a little additional research revealed that there are certain species that you can eat with a relatively guilt-free conscience. The Monterrey Bay Aquarium puts out a pocket-size Seafood Watch Guide (in fact, a separate guide for each region of the USA) to make seafood buying decisions easy (or, as easy as they can be given that you still need to distinguish between US-farmed and Central America-farmed tilapia). They also have a handy iPhone app.



Consulting my regional Seafood Watch Guide revealed that one of the things that I am encouraged to eat is wild Pacific halibut. This brings me to Exhibit B: pictured above is last night's dinner, a 6 ounce portion of broiled wild halibut, served with a homemade organic zucchini salsa verde and roasted organic new potatoes.

I'm pretty sure that we got through the meal without committing any major moral offenses.

Furthermore, the zucchini salsa verde is from the August issue of Bon Appetit and is highly recommended -- you can find the recipe here.

Go Fish

Be honest: does fish scare you?

Because recently it's come to my attention that the majority of Americans are freaked out by the idea of cooking fish. In a meeting with the product development team from a national kitchen and home goods store, I was told that food items relating to fish preparation (spices, marinades, sauces, etc.) typically didn't sell well in their stores, which has led them to realize that their customers don't cook much fish at home. Later in the same week an editor at a large entertainment news weekly informed me that they do not print fish recipes as a matter of policy, having deemed fish to be inaccessible by their readership.

To me, this is bizarre and worrisome. You want to know what's actually difficult to cook well? Chicken. Lean cuts of pork. In fact, all leans cuts of all meat. You know what's easy? Fish.

I assume that you, my readers, represent a higher order of person than those scared off by our legless friends. But just in case any of you number among the fish-phobic, I'm here to help. Today I bring you a cheap, quick, easy - dare I say foolproof? - method for cooking fish.

Take the lowly tilapia. This does not number among my favorite fish. It sounds like a tropical disease and, cooked plain, it tastes of wet sock. As soon as it begins to cook, tilapia gets VERY flaky and begins to fall apart. Every time I have cooked it in a skillet it has come out the other end looking like a pile of mashed potatoes. I've never tried grilling it, but can assume that that's a non-starter.

HOWEVER...tilapia is cheap, one of the most environmentally sustainable fish out there, and very low in fat and calories, so we should stop being such snobs and learn how to cook it properly. Let's focus on the positive, shall we?



Think of tilapia as the fish equivalent of tofu: it may not have a lot of flavor on its own, but it soaks up the flavors around it. When cooked with the right mix of pungent ingredients, it can really be lovely.

Here is how I recommend you prepare it: wrap it in a tin foil pouch with assorted flavorful things and stick it under the broiler for 20-30 minutes. This creates hassle-free, flavor-packed steamed fish with very minimal cleanup (just ball up the tin foil and throw it away). It also pretty much eliminates any wafting fish odors that threaten to weasel their way into your carpets and fabrics, which is always a consideration when pan-roasting fish.



I made tilapia this way last night, and have included below a recipe for the preparation I used. I've named it Tilapia Marseillaise, since the ingredients I used were a mix of Provencal and North African flavors, ones that you generally find in the cuisine of Marseilles (think Bouillabaisse). Also, today is Bastille Day, so I felt that I should nod in the direction of France. Ergo, Tilapia Marseillaise.

But get creative here, people; no need to use the same ingredients as I did. This is an opportunity to comb through your refrigerator and cupboards and experiment. You will be amazed at how exciting it is when you successfully cook something that you thought up all by yourself. The only guideline here is to include strong herbs and/or spices (mine were a Moroccan spice blend called ras el hanout and saffron).



Tilapia Marseillaise
Serves 2

2 6-8 oz tilapia fillets
1.5 cups chopped tomatoes
2 pinches saffron
1 Tbsp. ras el hanout
1/2 lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
1 Tbsp. fresh thyme leaves
6 sprigs thyme
2 cloves garlic, halved and crushed
2 large sheets tin foil

1. Place each fillet on its own sheet of tin foil, and sprinkle them with salt, pepper, ras el hanout, and saffron.
2. Squeeze lemon onto the fillets, coat with them olive oil, and place thyme, garlic, and tomatoes on top.
3. Wrap the tin foil sheets into pouches (folding the short ends inwards, and then rolling the long ends together like the top of a lunch bag).
4. Place them directly under broiler, seam side up, and let cook 20 - 30 minutes.
5. Unwrap and transfer to plates.