Cooking for Alan – Dinner #11 Perfectly Poached Lobster, Corn and Peach Cobbler
Well, tonight we blew it out of the park on an extravagant, decadent meal. For my 50th recipe from Ina Garten’s Cooking for Jeffrey book, it had to be Perfectly Poached Maine Lobster. Sadly I cannot provide a link to the exact recipe. But after reading this blog post you’ll have all that you need to know about how to prepare this delicacy.
Menu
Salad of cherry tomatoes, artichoke hearts, olives and mozzarella
Perfectly poached lobster and corn
Sourdough bread
Fresh peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream
We sourced live lobster from our local store. They had shared with us that since it was coming up on Labor Day weekend they had just gotten in a fresh batch. While we were aiming for lobsters in the 1.5 pound range, the only ones we could get were closer to 2 pounds each! When you live in a land locked state in the middle of the US…the fish guys know what they’re doing to get us to pay really big bucks for these delicious crustacean.
Since I’d never cooked live lobster before, I took some time to watch a few videos to see different ways of handling these beasts. Some say poach them in heavily salted boiling water (like Ina’s recipe). Some swear by steaming them. Some say remove the bands before cooking (which we did). Some say leave the bands on while cooking. What I learned the most from watching videos was the way to break down the lobster for eating. It is actually very simple. Maybe for me since I have no problem breaking down a whole chicken, filleting fish and trimming other cuts of meat. I chose to remove the delicious, sweet and juicy meat before plating. No need for us to struggle at the table wrestling these hard shelled big bugs.
Our biggest challenge was getting the water in our huge pot to boil. We chose to cook them outside on the side burner of our gas grill. Unfortunately between the storm that blew through bringing lots of wind…we ended up waiting for well over an hour for the salted water to reach a rapid boil. Next time we’ll use the propane high heat burner we use when we deep fry turkeys. Once we reached a boil we plunged both big boys head first in the pot. Since they were so large (nearly 2 pounds each) we cooked them for 18 minutes. Most lobster cooks recommend 10 minutes per pound. However Ina Garten says that as long as the tail meat reaches 140 then they’re finished.
After we removed the lobster from the pot, we threw in fresh ear corn. While it cooked I was able to break down the lobsters and remove their succulent, sweet meat. We served the lobster with a lovely bowl of melted butter that included lots of fresh herbs and plenty of lemon zest. We used the butter as a dip for the lobster as well as a drizzle for the fresh corn. I may have even dunked some sourdough bread into the bowl as well. Yes…it was a herby butter fest!
I’m pretty proud of how my 50th recipe from Ina Garten’s book turned out. Cooking and enjoying this type of meal is an “event”…albiet an expensive event. That’s partly why I waited to feature this for my 50th dish.
Stay tuned for my next blog post on how I made the Fresh Peach Cobbler,
