The cookbook I am working on features a lot of seasonal as well as luxury ingredients. I am waiting for some things like chanterelles, baby artichokes and blood oranges to become available and had put off making the two recipes that required lobster, due to expense. It's lucky I did. Just last week I got a lovely email from the folks at Sagamore Lobster offering to send me two live lobsters to try out their service and their products. What perfect timing!
Sure enough my lobsters arrived yesterday and I began having visions from the Woody Allen film that inspired this blog. Yikes! Live lobsters! Ok, it's nowhere near as grizzly as say slaughtering a pig, but in it's own way I guess this was my macho Anthony Bourdain killing-what-you-eat moment and I wimped out. I allowed my official taster/lobster handler to remove the crustaceans from the box and drop them in the pot.
My first recipe was for a BLT sandwich that contained lobster. Suffice it to say, a little lobster salad helps hold lots of other goodies in place in a mini sandwich. My second recipe had the nebulous title of Lobster Cocktail with Citrus and Herbs. I remembered seeing a gorgeous recipe for a crayfish salad in Peter Gordon's Salads book. I don't often cook from the book, but the flavor combinations often inspire me. In this case I substituted lobster for crayfish and combined it with just a few of the main flavors of the salad--grapefruit, avocado and chives--to create a cocktail. Both dishes were absolutely delicious!
Many thanks to Sagamore Lobster, if you are looking to purchase live lobsters, do check them out. The lobsters they sent arrived in great shape and were delicious!