Lobster

I'm going to be horribly cliche here. I went to Maine, so I cooked some lobstahs. Maybe it's not cliche. Maybe there's a good reason for it.

In any case, for a lobster rookie, cooking them is not a difficult task. Alarming, maybe... but difficult? Hardly! As long as you have the right equipment.

First of all, you have to go to your family's cottage in Maine and drag out the old lobster pot. It's huge. About four times the size of a regular stockpot. Lobsters don't like to go in pots and will try to sabotage your efforts, but if the pot is large enough they really don't have much of a choice. If your family doesn't have a cottage in Maine, sucks to be you. you can probably still cook a lobster if you can find the right pot (make sure it has a lid).



Your next step, obviously, is to get ahold of some lobsters. One lobster per lobster-eater is the way to go. Unless you have two very small dogs who plan on eating lobster as well, in which case they can split one. To get lobsters, go to Simpson's Seafood off Route 1 just south of Wiscasset. It's the home of Superfresh. If you can't get there, they ship.



After you get your lobsters, what's left to do but roll up your sleeves and get down to business?





LOBSTER

1-5 hard-shell lobsters
~1 tbsp good sea salt
2 oz (half a stick) butter
4-6 slices fresh, crusty bread
1-2 lemons in wedges

1. Put a few inches of water in the bottom of your lobster pot. 2-3 inches should do it. Put it over high heat and cover the pot so it heats faster. We want this sucker hot.

2. Put the butter on a low simmer in a little pan. Instead of clarifying it, brown it. Over the course of lobster-cooking, you should be able to easily achieve this goal. But don't let it get black, or it will taste kind of like burnt butter. Or a lot like burnt butter. It will take a long time to brown if you keep it on low heat, which you should do. The butter is browned when... well, when you see that it's starting to brown. Not that hard.

3. When your pot of water comes to a boil, add the salt and stir it to dissolve. You don't want undissolved salt sitting on the bottom of your pan, as it will corrode aluminum and damage stainless steel.





4. As soon as the pot comes to a rolling, hardy boil, it's ready for lobsters.



Take them out of whatever they're in (you can leave the rubber bands on their claws) and drop them right in headfirst. Quickly. The shock of going from cold to boiling hot kills them instantly. Cover the pot immediately.



5. Leave the lobsters in their bath for 20 minutes. You may hear a high-pitched whine at some point. No, the lobsters aren't screaming in pain. They are dead, and steam is whistling from out their carapace. Kind of like a kettle.



6. While the lobsters are steaming, slice up your bread and wedge up your lemons. You'll be glad you did.



7. After your time is up, turn off the heat to the lobster pot and fish them out with tongs. Place them directly in a cold-water bath or colander with running cold water. This stops the cooking process and allows you to handle them.



8. You might want to put the cooked lobsters on a rimmed baking sheet or pan. When you rip them apart to eat them, they release a lot of delicious lobster broth. But as good as it is, you probably don't want it all over your table or shirt.





9. Eat up. You might need some tools. Something to crack the tougher parts (like the claws), and something to pick out the more delicate parts (like the legs). These help:



You can eat just about anything on a lobster. If I were you, I probably wouldn't eat the shell. Or the "vein" (intestine) running down through the tail. The green goopy stuff is the tomalley (liver), and it's delicious. Suck the juice from the legs. And anything else that gushes out when you rip something off.

Due to the distraction of the author during feeding time, she is unable to bring you pictures documenting the best ways to eat a lobster.

I will tell you, though, dip the lobster meat into the browned butter and squeeze a little lemon on it. Also dip the bread in the browned butter. You're in for a treat. But all you'll have to show for it is a bunch of mangled lobster carapace pieces. C'est la vie.

PROS: easy. cheap ($4-$5 a pound). deeeeeelicious.
CONS: it stares at you before and after you cook it (but it doesn't judge.) Also, lobsters are detritivores, which means they eat whatever's lying around. And you are what you eat...


PS: I got a new Canon 50D. I loves it.

Biscuit Cassoulet

I've got to hand it to Isa and Terry. They sure know what they're doing. Go check out their book (well, one of them) right now.

One of these days I'll really start making my own recipes. Sure, I do that now, but only about once a month and I never blog about them. Maybe they're so delicious I just don't want people to know.

For now, though, I'll stick with this cassoulet. It's the second time I've made it - which is saying something, since I rarely make the same thing twice (unless it's my special lasagna, or cookies or something). It reminds me a lot of the pot-roasty, beef-stewy type home-cookin' that I used to love so much. Only, you know, without that pesky meat.

Just about everything in this dish you can find at the farmer's market in midwinter. The leeks, potatoes, carrots, and garlic are all from vendors at the University District Farmer's Market in Seattle. The flour for the biscuits was obtained from a vendor at the market until I dumped it on the floor and had to borrow my mom's AP flour (these things happen. I've learned to frown really hard for two minutes and then forget about them). The vegetable broth is homemade from veggie scraps I save during my cooking (I'll blog about that sometime).

I missed the onions by a month or two, so I had to get them from the store (poo), and the beans I could have gotten from one of the many dried bean vendors at the market but I forgot about it, and thus the bulk aisle once again comes to my aid. Frozen peas could have easily been obtained fresh in summer and then frozen at home, but I'm silly and don't think to do things like that most of the time. Buttermilk too, they sell at the market, but I'm never there early enough (it sells out fast) so it also came from the store. But the point is that I could have gotten it straight from the farmer. I think the only things you can't find at the market here are salt, pepper, cornstarch, leavening agents, and sustainable palm oil (non-hydrogenated shortening).

That said, if you're not trying to eat locally, all these things can also be found in the grocery store. It's just not nearly as fun to get them.

Oh, and this recipe can be vegan - but I used buttermilk for the biscuits instead of soy milk/vinegar because I had buttermilk in my refrigerator. But I didn't have any soy milk. So there you have it.


BISCUIT CASSOULET
adapted slightly from the "Leek and Bean Cassoulet with Biscuits" from Veganomicon by Isa Moscowitz and Terry Romero

CASSOULET
1 lb (3 smallish) purple potatoes, cut into cubes - about 3 cups (any small waxy potatoes will do, but these are so colorful)
2 tbsp cooking oil, olive or otherwise
1 lb carrots, peeled cut into pieces smaller than the potato cubes
1-2 cups chopped onion (I used yellow, but red would have been spectacular)
2 cups thinly sliced leeks (make sure you wash them really well, mud gets into places on a leek you've never even heard of)
3 cups vegetable stock
3 tbsp cornstarch or arrowroot powder
2-3 cloves garlic, pressed
1-2 tbsp chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/2 tsp salt (or as needed)
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/4 cup frozen peas
1 cup cooked navy beans, rinsed

BISCUITS
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup shortening (go natural, not carcinogenic)
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

1. Put potatoes in a small pot of boiling salt water. Cook for 10-15 minutes until just done. Don't make them too soft, because they'll cook more later and you don't want them to fall apart. Or maybe you do, what do I know? Drain them once they're cooked and set them aside. They can sit at room temperature for awhile.

2. Heat a large (12 inch), ovenproof saute pan or cast-iron skillet over medium heat (no higher, because your leeks will get mushy and your onions will burn). By ovenproof, I mean no nonstick coating, no plastic handle, no rubber anywhere, just all-metal. Add the oil, carrots, onion, and leeks.



Let these saute for awhile until the onions turn translucent and there's a little browning action. This should take about 10 minutes.

3. While that's cooking up, whisk the cornstarch into your vegetable stock. It's important that the vegetable stock is cool or cold when you do this, because cornstarch will clump up and be awful if you whisk it into something hot. You'd have little weird unidentifiable lumps in your stew, and nobody would ever eat at your house again. On another note, I used half cornstarch, half tapioca starch because I ran out of cornstarch. I don't recommend this. It won't thicken properly.

4. When the carrot mixture has achieved proper sauteedness, add the garlic, thyme, salt and pepper to the pan and stir it up to coat the rest of the vegetables. Only let that cook about a minute - you should smell the garlic but it shouldn't be anywhere near brown.



5. Heat the oven to 425°F. Add the cooked potatoes and the peas and dump in the stock (give the stock a quick whisk right before you dump it in). Mix it all up to be uniform.



Turn the heat up to medium high and bring to a simmer. Turn it back down and simmer for 7 minutes. Turn it off afterward and carefully stir in the beans.

6. In the meantime, whip up some biscuits. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Using a pastry cutter or fork, cut in the shortening (toss it around and mash it a bit) until it is full of little lumps. You don't want it creamy-smooth, and you don't want large fatty bits either. Slowly pour in the buttermilk while you continue to mix it up with a fork or pastry cutter until everything is moistened and it's a little lumpy. Knead it up a few times with your hands to give it a little workout, and then you're ready to roll.

7. Ball up bits of dough (I made eight biscuits, but you could do 10 or 12) and drop them in the skillet over the cassoulet, spaced evenly apart.



8. Put the whole thing in the oven and keep it there for 15 minutes. The biscuits should be getting nice and golden. Take it out very carefully using doubled up potholders on the handle (don't forget that the handle will be hot). You might need two hands to do this without disaster, especially if you're using cast iron. Serve this puppy right away - make sure there's a biscuit in every bowl. Tada! Dinner.

PROS: easy to get ingredients, tasty, comforting, colorful, hot and full of goodness
CONS: well... it's not low-glycemic. full of lovely calories!

Caribbean Crab Soufflé

There are a few times each year that I like to prepare lengthy, course-filled meals with expensive ingredients. New Years Eve is one such occasion. I was blessed this holiday to enjoy Dungeness crab, succulent mushrooms, ratta"stew"ie (more on that later), and green salad. Food during these long course-by-course meals is slow, and more filling.

Dungeness crab (or any crab, for that matter) is not cheap. But at least, here in the Pacific Northwest, it's local and in season right now - and it makes the SeafoodWATCH's "Best choices" list. But how to make a meal to feature crab? Everyone makes crab cakes... something different would be nice. My grandma made KILLER crab salad with celeriac for Christmas. I can't find any recipe resembling it anywhere, so what to do? I need a crab dish to sweep in the new year.

It just so happens that I'm the lucky recipient of five (count 'em - 5!) different new cookbooks from Christmas. Flipping through them (well, flipping through two, as three were vegetarian), the recipe that caught my eye (haha, caught... you know, like in a crab trap) was crab soufflé. Caribbean crab soufflé.

And I love anything with excessive amounts of beaten egg white!

Not to mention this yearning in the back of my mind to return to the warm, sandy, quiet beaches of the coastal Caribbean city of Cahuita, Costa Rica. (It's not really a city... more like a small town. But "town" starts with a t, not a c.) Although, I don't know how much soufflé anyone actually makes there. I guess it's the seasoning that counts.

It was surprisingly simple to make, once all the crab was out of the shell, and as soufflés go, it was pretty sturdy. Serve it on an ocean blue plate and it makes you want to dive in the gentle, salty swell of the sea. And cast your crab traps.


CARIBBEAN CRAB SOUFFLÉ
from The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins, tweaked slightly and scaled down by 1/2

1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
2 tbsp unsalted butter
3 tbsp minced celery leaves
1 clove of garlic, pressed
1/4 tsp curry powder
1/4 tsp dried thyme leaves
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 1/2 tbsp flour
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp milk
2 egg yolks
4 oz fresh crabmeat, cartilage removed
3 egg whites
1/8 tsp fresh lemon juice

1. Prepare your mise en place. If you buy a whole crab (cheaper and fresher), you will not know how much it weighs, so be prepared to a) give it your best guess, or b) have a scale on hand. Pick it carefully out of the shell, from the legs and the body cavity. It's so good. Make sure to get all the shell bits out. You may also want to mix up the spices (curry powder, thyme, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper) ahead of time so you can just chuck them all in at once.

2. Prepare a 4-cup soufflé dish (those round white ceramic things with the ripply sides) by generously buttering the inside. Preheat the oven to 400ºF.

3. Toast your coconut! Lucky us, we had some shredded coconut leftover from making rundown in August (fresh shredded coconut freezes beautifully). You can toast it in an 8-inch pan for a few minutes, until it's lightly browned and all dried out. Ours took a little while, since it was never dried. Put it aside when it's done.

4. Heat up another small pan over low heat and melt the butter in it. Cook the celery leaves with the garlic and spices. Stirring a bit, cook for a few minutes. The garlic shouldn't brown, but it should smell really awesome.



5. Add the flour and stir it to coat the contents of the pan. Cook no more than a minute before adding milk and increasing the heat to medium.



Stir constantly! If you don't, it might scorch on the bottom, resulting in blackened, bad-tasting food. When the milk begins to simmer, take it off the heat. It should be thick and smooth. If not, keep stirring on the heat until it is. (Of note: if you are using rice milk, it will never get thick or smooth. just don't do it. soy should probably work, though.)



6. When it cools a little, whisk in each egg yolk, one at a time. If you do it when the mixture is too hot, the yolks will cook instantly and get all clumpy. That texture is undesirable for many a reason, not least of which is that it's gross (but mainly because the yolks will no longer provide the thickening richness that they would if they were properly mixed in). Mix in the crab and coconut at this point.

7. In a nice metal bowl (for reasons that a food chemist would understand), beat the egg whites with the lemon juice to soft peaks. The "soft peak" stage of egg whites is achieved when you lift the beater or whisk out of the bowl of beaten whites, to leave a floppy point, like a santa hat. Finish it off carefully by hand to stiff peaks - but don't let it get dry. When in doubt, underwhip a little. The "stiff peak" stage looks more like a witch's hat, and goes very quickly to dry oblivion, which is pretty useless and unrecoverable.



8. Put about a quarter of the beaten egg whites into the crab mixture and gently fold with a rubber spatula to "lighten" the custardy crab. Put the lightened crab mix in with the rest of the egg whites, and very gently fold with a rubber spatula in a forward circular motion. Cut down the center of the whites with the spatula and pull it back up toward you again on the bottom of the bowl, folding over the top again and cutting down the middle. Rotate the bowl as you do this until it's mostly incorporated but a wee bit streaky. The more you fold, the more you deflate the air bubbles in the egg whites, so don't get OCD about mixing it completely.



9. Scoop all this into your buttered soufflé dish and stick it straight into the hot oven.



Bake for roughly 25 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and it's all puffy. Serve it right away, before it deflates! It should still be moist inside, but cooked.

PROS: great flavor, hard to mess up, nice and spicy
CONS: would like more crab flavor


I'd make this again, surely. I'd like to try it with some kind of fish, too.