FFWD - Vanilla-Butter-Braised Lobster

 

She's your lobster!

                                                   Phoebe Buffet, Friends

 

For French Fridays with Dorie this week, we are back on our extended trip to the seaside.  However, today we are trying something very different - Vanilla-Butter-Braised Lobster. 

 

I had never previously tasted, let alone cooked, lobster, and I was kind of like a rabbit in the headlights for a while.  This was compounded by the fact that Dorie's unabridged recipe involved using 4 live lobsters and 700g of butter!  I didn't even know where to buy live lobster.

 

Once I had time to take a step back, my plan of action was clear.  I would go to the fishmonger in a posh neighbourhood, where they were more likely to stock lobster, and I would ask for frozen lobster (ie one that someone else had conveniently dispatched for me).

 

In this vein, I ventured off to the balmy climes of Hawksburn Village, where indeed I was able to acquire frozen lobster.  However, frozen lobster tends to mean just the lobster tail.  I was fine with that, especially as the cheapest said lobster tail (singular) cost $25.95!

 

The lobster tail went into the freezer until Valentines Day, when I invited Tim to dinner to share in my rather pricey lobster entree.

 

I scaled down the clarified butter to 125g (as a guess), and prepped butter and lobster before Tim came over.

 

To prepare the lobster for braising, you have to dunk it in boiling water for a few minutes.  It goes from this:    



to this:

Inside, once the shell is peeled away, you get very pretty red meat:

The lobster had its revenge somewhat, as its shell is remarkably spiny, so I had to take care in removing it.  However, the shell thankfully yielded up the meat very easily, even if it did prick my fingers.

Once you have your prepped lobster meat and vanilla flavoured clarified butter (yep, you read correctly) ready, it is a very simple matter to braise the meat in the butter.  I halved the lobster tail for an entree sized serving.

I served the lobster meat on a bed of lemon steamed spinach, as suggested by Dorie.  I was pleasantly surprised by this dish - the vanilla flavour was quite subtle (Tim couldn't detect it at all),  and the overall dish was very tasty.  However, with the price of lobster, I won't be serving it too often!

To see what the other Doristas thought of this dish, visit the LYL section of the FFWD website.

If you are a fan of fashion, do check out my travel blog post on the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition which was recently hosted by the National Gallery of Victoria.