It was in my calendar, but I missed it. Julia Child’s birthday was August 15th, and it slipped right by me, despite my promise to cook one of her recipes on her birthday every year. My workaround was to reserve half of the lobster I prepared and use it the next day, fudging the date as that on which her birthday was observed. If it works for US presidents, it should work for her.

This particular recipe is from Julia Child and More Company, which, sadly, is out of print but still available used. As Julia explains in her introduction:

The model for this dish is a clasic dish, which was not devised in the first place for reasons of economy. It originated in the Plaza-Athénée Hotel in Paris, which in the old days was reputed to have the most exquisite cuisine-for-the-happy-few to be imaginable. Its base is the famous lobster à l’américaine … Mounding a soufflé over the lobster meat was the Plaza-Athénée’s contribution to elegance.

Apart from cooking the lobster, the sauce could also be made in advance, but I chose to prepare the whole dish in one big push, which took about two and a half hours. I began with the sauce:

Sauce À l’Américaine

After a bit of chopping and measuring I assembled my ingredients: a cup of white wine; the leftover lobster shells; four tablespoons of softened butter; a tablespoon of lobster tomalley (liver); a cup and a half of chopped, peeled, seeded tomatoes; a medium carrot, diced; a minced clove of garlic (not shown); a cup of lobster stock (paradoxically, making lobster stock requires lobster stock); a tablespoon and a half each of softened butter and flour; a tablespoon of tomato paste; a teaspoon of dried tarragon; a medium onion, diced; half a cup of cognac; and half a cup of beef stock.

I added the shells to a pot filmed with olive oil and cooked them over high heat for three minutes before adding the carrot and onion. After another three minutes, I added the cognac and flamed it. Fire! Heh heh, fire!

I extinguished the flames with the lobster stock, then added the beef stock and wine. I stirred in the tomatoes, garlic, tomato paste, tarragon, and some salt and pepper before covering and simmering for thirty minutes. I wound up with a pot of deep red lobser stock.

While the stock simmered, I mixed the equal portions of flour and butter together to make a beurre manié, then mixed the larger quantity of butter with the tomalley, and passed it through a fine-meshed sieve.

The tomalley butter went into the fridge. I strained the shells and vegetables out of the stock, passing it twice though a fine sieve and reserving the shells. I whisked the beurre manié into the stock and simmered it until lightly thickened, ending up with a cup and a half of sauce à l’américaine.

Lobster Soufflé

While the stock for the sauce simmered, I assembled the ingredients for the soufflé: five egg whites, lobster meat from three tails and a dozen claws (about ten ounces), a cup of whole milk, three quarters of a cup of coarsely grated swiss cheese, three egg yolks, three tablespoons of flour, a half teaspoon of salt, a quarter teaspoon of cream of tartar, and three tablespoons of butter.

I smeared butter in an oval baking pan and lined it with six croutons made from white sandwich bread. I also pre-heated the oven to 425 °F.

I divided the lobster meat over the croutons and dribbled half a tablespoon of the sauce over each portion.

Time for the soufflé: I set the milk over low heat, then made a roux from the butter and flour, cooking it for about two minutes.

Off heat I whisked in the hot milk, then added the salt and some white pepper. I brought the resulting béchamel to a boil, stirring for one minute.

I beat the egg whites until they were foamy, added the cream of tartar and a pinch of salt, and continued beating until they formed stiff shiny peaks.

I beat the egg yolks into the béchamel, stirred in one quarter of the egg whites to lighten the mixture, then folded in the remaining whites while alternating with small handfuls of the grated cheese.

I mounded the soufflé over the lobster-topped croutons and sprinkled the remaining two tablespoons of cheese over the top.

As soon as I placed the platter  in the upper-middle level of the oven, I reheated the sauce and thickened it by whisking in the tomalley butter. After fifteen minutes, the soufflé was ready. Julia suggested garnishing the plater with a set of reserved lobster shells (“Head, claw, and tail shells announce that this is a soufflé of … lobster!”), so I did.

I plated a third of the soufflé, sauced it lightly, and garnished simply with sliced tomatoes and cucumbers.

It may surprise you to learn that this was the first soufflé I have ever cooked — it certanly surprised She Who Must Be Obeyed. It didn’t collapse, nothing overcooked, it was a lovely conmbination of egg, cheese, and sweet lobster. Even He Who Will Not Be Ignored declared it “the best lobster omelette I’ve ever eaten.” I may just have to try my hand at a more traditional cylindrical soufflé, perhaps a dessert version.

So, another Saint Julia’s day has passed. I leave you with this image, etched by the Sainted One herself in the cement in from of Savenor’s, her local butcher:

Sources

Lobster: Market Basket
Eggs: Feather Ridge Farm
Cheese, butter: Whole Foods
Lobster stock: Belm Utility Research Kitchen Deep Storage Facility

New Englanders can get downright religious about how their iconic seafood dishes are prepared. Fried clams must be whole, not strips. Chowdah is made with milk, clams, and potatoes, not that tomato soup with clams that they serve in New York City. And lobster rolls should be made with lobster, a bit of mayo, and a smattering of diced celery, served on a grilled top-split flat-sided hot dog bun. Anything else is just fancying up the dish to make it cost more. The lobster roll dichotomy in Boston is best exemplified by the $15 classic served at Kelly’s versus the $27 upscale inerpretation found at Barbara Lynch’s B&G Oysters (you can see it in the slide show on the splash screen).

At least once every sumer I have  Kelly’s lobster roll, but, spurred on by the semi-annual cheap soft-shell lobster sale at the local supermarket, I chose to make my own. I picked the recipe from Ad Hoc at Home, which nicely split the difference between upscale and barebones. Any lobster roll recipe must start with good lobster, and so did I.

Lobster

Greater love for his family has no man than that which causes him to be out of bed and in a supermarket on a Sunday morning at 8 AM. I bought six soft-shell lobsters, which weighed in at seven and a quarter pounds.

I steamed them for ten minutes and let them cool.

I split the lobsters into tails, claws, and bodies, then, with the help of She Who Must Be Obeyed, extracted as much meat as possible. Sadly, we discovered the She Who has a severe and immediate reaction to handling lobsters, the dreaded Claw Hand:

An hour (and one Benadryl) later, I had a yield of twelve ounces of tail meat, six ounces of claw meat, and three ounces of knuckle and leg meat, a mere eighteen percent of the total weight. I also had a bag full of lobster shells for stock.

Lobster Roll

To make the lobster salad, I assembled a tablespoon each of minced red onion, finely chopped peeled celery, chopped chives, and chopped parsley, a teaspoon of dried tarragon, half a lime, two tablespoons of homemade mayonnaise, and ten ounces of lobster tail and knuckle meat. (These proportions are for a half recipe.)

I mixed the mayo and lobster together to coat.

I added the onion, celery, tarragon, chives, parsley, salt and pepper, and stirred to combine. I squeezed the lime over the mixture, gave it another stir, then covered it and put in the fridge while I started on the corn.

Corn on the Cob with Lime Salt

Lime salt is easy. Start with a quarter cup of Maldon sea salt and the zest of one lime.

Mix them together in a jar (I used an empty spice jar with a large-holed shaker top) and store it in the freezer until needed.

To make the corn (again, a half recipe), I used three ears of sweet corn cut in half, three tablespoons of unsalted butter at room temperature,  tablespoon of chopped chives, and the lime salt.

I boiled the corm for five minutes. While it cooked, I put a tablespoon of the cooking water in a large heatproof bowl, then added the butter and swirled over medium heat until the butter emulsified (making a beurre monté). I swirled in the lime salt to taste.

When the corn was ready, I tossed it in the butter and added the chives, tossing again to coat.

Final Assembly

While the corn cooked, I cut and washed some lettuce leaves and used a peeler to cut celery ribbons.

Lastly, I toasted the hot dog buns on a buttered griddle.

To assemble, I lined the inside of each bun with the lettuce leaves, spooned in the lobster salad, and topped each roll with a celery ribbon. I served each roll with two pieces of the corn.

As lobster rolls go, this one was quite tasty without being as heavy as the straight-up-with-fries version. The tarragon accented the natural sweetness of the lobster while the chives and onion provided a bit of bite. There was just enough crunch from the celery, and the lettuce kept the mayo from making the bun soggy.

As for the corn, this is my new favorite preparation method. The lime added just enough subtle acidity to cut the sweetness. I may add a bit of chile powder the next time, but this version is worth making again and again.

What about the rest of the lobster? I kept it in the fridge for the next meal, which is the subject of tomorrow’s post.

Sources

Lobster, hot dog buns, lime: Market Basket
Corn: Nicewicz Farm
Maldon sea salt: Whole Foods

It has been a very good summer for tomatoes; we eat them at least three times a week. But after a while the classic combination of tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, and olive oil acquires a numbing sameness. Looking for a way to do justice to two pints of beautiful cherry tomatoes, I turned to my go-to cookbook, Momofuku, and found this recipe, Chang’s take on the classic flavor profile:

Tofu, we realized, could do the same thing mozzarella does in a traditional caprese salad: moderate the acidity of the tomatoes, lend the dish some creaminess, and make it more substantial. Shiso and basil are like long-lost cousins: they have totally different flavors, though they share a sort of mintiness, but they’re used in a lot of the same ways. And the touch of sesame oil in the vinaigrette echoes the nuttiness of good olive oil.

The recipe is simple: start with two pints of mixed cherry tomatoes, a twelve-ounce block of silken tofu, a quarter cup of sherry vinegar, a tablespoon of light soy sauce, a quarter cup of canola oil, a teaspoon of sesame oil, and some fresh shiso leaves.

I prepared two thirds of the tomatoes by cutting a slash in the bottoms, dropping them into boiling salted water for ten seconds, then shocking them in ice water.

Once cold, I peeled the tomatoes, then sliced the remaining third in half.

While the tomatoes rested in the fridge, I drained the tofu and sliced it in half through its length.

I punched out tofu rounds using a two-inch biscuit cutter.

To make the vinaigrette, I combined the oil, vinegar, soy, and sesame oil and whisked it together. I also chiffonaded the shiso leaves.

I added all of the tomatoes to the vinaigrette and tossed to coat. For the final assembly I placed two slices of the tofu in each serving bowl, sprinkled with a pinch of salt, topped with the dressed tomatoes, added another pinch of salt and some freshly ground pepper, and finished with the shiso chiffonade (there’s a tongue-twister for you: shiso chiffonade).

This dish was a much-needed variation on the summer formula. The textures were the same as a caprese salad, but the flavors were a real surprise: minty shiso and smoky vinaigrette (from the sesame oil) took the dish in a different direction. It was a perfect compliment to a simple pan-roasted halibut. She Who Must Be Obeyed has already demanded that I make this again. And who am I to refuse?

Sources

Tomatoes: Kimball Fruit Farm
Tofu, shiso, soy sauce, sesame oil: Reliable Market
Sherry vinegar: Capone Foods

I have this urge to roast a whole (small) pig in my backyard, but I’ve not done it before. I discovered that a motorized rotisserie attachment was available for my grill for a mere $35, which I treated as a sign that my grand scheme should proceed. Still, I am unwilling to ruin $200 worth of baby pig, so I initiated a program of test runs to make sure I had a good feel for the interactions of machinery, fire, and meat.

Experiment No. 1 was chicken: easy to roast, hard to screw up, not too much weight on the new rig, and needing only an hour and a half to cook. Andrea, my culinary consultant, had given me a spice rub she brought back from Egypt. It was a mixture of coriander seeds, tumeric, sumac, cumin, pepper, and a few other unidentifiable spices that stained my hands bright yellow. I rubbed it over and in two four-pound chickens that I had brined in a sugar and salt solution for an hour, making sure to get some of the rub under the skin.

I trussed each chicken with twine (using the traditional method) to give them a uniform shape before sliding them onto the spit. I faced the breasts toward each other to protect them from the heat and rotated one of the chickens with its back facing up to distribute the weight. After securing them on the spit forks, I mounted the assembly on the grill. I divided the coals in baskets at either end and placed a drip pan under the chickens to avoid any mess and flare-ups.

After an hour and a half of completely unattended spinning and cooking (I checked once at the half-hour mark to make sure everything was still properly positioned), the chickens were ready.

The self-basting from the rostisserie resulted in chicken was moist, flavorful, and perfectly cooked with crisp skin. The spice rub was more subtle than I had expected, well-balanced and very aromatic.

Experiment No. 1 was a success. The rig worked as advertised, I expended almost no effort tending the food, and it turned out tasty eats as well. However, I’ve spent too much of my life in the company of engineers, so I know another stress test is in order. I’m thinking of the tandoori turkey recipe from Paul Riddell at the Texas Triffid Ranch. Stay tuned.

This dish accompanied the bacon-wrapped skirt steak I made last week. It is yet another vegetable preparation from Momofuku, and it uses the same miso butter as the roasted sweet summer corn. I started with five tablespoons of softened unsalted butter and half a cup of shiro miso.

I mixed the two together with a fork, blending until any streaks were gone, then stored it in the fridge.

I prepared six slow-poached eggs by dunking them in my sous vide water bath at 60 °C for forty-five minutes. Since the steak also had to be immersed, I prepared the eggs early, shocked them in ice water, and refrigerated them until needed. Then I dropped the water temp to what was needed for the steak. You could also go with the original “ghetto sous vide” rig shown in this post.

While the steak rested, I assembled my ingredients: three tablespoons of butter, the miso butter, two teaspoons of sherry vinegar, and a half pound of medium asparagus with the ends trimmed and peeled.

I put the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat and added the asparagus when the foaming subsided. After three minutes I added a pinch of salt and turned the asparagus, lowering the heat to medium.

While the asparagus cooked, I warmed the vinegar in a saucepan over medium heat for half a minute, turned the heat to low, and added the miso butter, stirring until it warmed through. It was a bit loose but still viscous, not melted. I moved the cooked asparagus to a paper towel-lined plate to drain, then warmed up the eggs by running hot tap water over them for a few minutes.

For the final assemblage, I smeared some of the miso butter on the plate, placed some asparagus spears on top, cracked an egg over everything, and garnished with black pepper.

Some of you might notice the similarity of this dish to the soft boiled egg with asparagus I prepared for She Who Must Be Obeyed’s birthday dinner. That was a much more delicate dish, with boiled asparagus and a sauce of fines herbes. In this dish, pan-roasting the asparagus intensified their flavor, allowing them to stand up against the aggressive saltiness of the miso butter. But the surprise was how the dish tasted once you broke the egg yolk over everything. Mixed with the miso, it created an intensely nutty, almost hollandiase-like sauce that we practically licked off the plates. Even the bacon-wraped steak tasted good when swabbed through that heavenly sauce.

I may not cook the asparagus that often, but I plan on using the egg and miso butter trick again for other vegetable dishes.