Alt-Rock Lobster

How can you improve lobster? What is better than a boiled or steamed Maine lobster, or a broiled or grilled Florida, Brazillian, or South African lobster tail? I rarely try to improve on nature when it comes to lobster, lobster is almost on the level of oysters, which can never be improved, should not ever be cooked, even, they should be eaten raw, alive, with nothing more than mignonnete, some fresh ground black pepper. But, I got these Thomas Keller books for Christmas, and his presentation caught my eye.



He doesn't like to boil or steam a lobster, he prefers a method that involves briefly par-boiling the beasts, then extracting the meat, and slowly poaching it in butter. This sounded fine to me, so I decided to try it.

I know, it sounds so arrogant, but I never follow recipes, I just take inspiration from them, and besides, my cooking is almost always driven by making use of what I have on hand, so I was neither inclined nor prepared to follow any of Keller's recipes precisely. But, I was ready to follow his general scheme, the main ingredient is usually stacked on top of a portion of some complementary (not complimentary) side, a vegetable preparation, I didn't have any of the things he uses in his recipes,so I took stock of what I had, and here is what I came up with: Lima beans. I had lima beans, I had red peppers, I had scallions, and some red pepper coulis sauce, leftover from something I made yesterday that I will blog tomorrow. And I had this, its something you can find in asian markets, you can buy frozen blocks of chopped lemongrass, either with or without hot chilis in it, its the greatest thing, any dish that calls for lemongrass, you pull this block of frozen chopped lemongrass out of the freezer, chop of a hunk,you are golden. This one has the hot chilis, I thought this would add that little something different:



I gently cooked these vegetables in a little white wine, then added the red pepper coulis, and the cream, it worked perfectly:



So, I wanted three elements for this dish, and I love potatoes with lobster, french fries with boiled lobster is heaven, but I am trying to be Keller-esque, so I went with something that turned out to be easy, but kinda cool, different, I never did this before. I buy these bags of tiny little exotic potatoes from Costco, little red, yellow, and purple potatoes, and I love to roast them, toss them in olive oil and herbs and roast them. But tonight, I had some goat cheese, and I thought, how about blending some goat cheese with the olive oil, tossing the potatoes in the goat cheese mix, and then roasting:



And, Voila! Goat cheese roasted fingerling potatoes:



Now, to gently poach the lobster in butter:



And then it was just the frantic effort to plate these elements, in some attractive way, and I am not so good at presentation, its certainly not Keller level, but here is the result:




I do just have to mention, there was one little secret ingredient in the lima-bean mix, white truffle oil, I was inspired, somehow, to remember, I had this truffle oil, and truffles and lobster, thats a good thing. The red pepper coulis-lemongrass-truffle oil sauce, on the lobster, was better than butter. As I said at the beginning, some things, fresh seafood and lobster most of all, are usually best kept as simple as possible, pure and simple, but this worked fantastically. In the end, I think it was those few drops of truffle oil that did it.