Eating - Jason Epstein [30]
On hot summer afternoons, I like to serve lobster rolls like those I made for our houseguests when we were first able to leave Manhattan for Sag Harbor after 9/11. I like the way Hellmann’s mayonnaise supplies the true, slightly tangy, not too oily Maine-coast flavor, and the look of the warm rolls lightly browned in butter and overflowing with cool lobster salad, on their platter, surrounded by frilly homemade potato chips, as the sun filters through a Murano-glass pitcher of Pinot Grigio, casting a yellow glow on the pink tablecloth on our terrace table.
For a first course at lunch a one-and-a-half-pound lobster will serve two, and for a main course at dinner each guest should be served a whole one. Be sure that your fishmonger gives you hard-shell lobsters. I buy them from a wholesaler in Chinatown all year round. Lobsters whose shells are pliable or soft will have recently molted and not yet grown into their new shells, which will be full of water for which you will be paying lobster prices. Ask for females. The eggs, called coral, turn red when cooked and have an intense lobster flavor. Not everyone appreciates this intensity, but it adds greatly to lobster salads and bisques.
Whatever their size, the lobsters should be vigorously alive before they are split and placed under a broiler, or dropped headfirst into two or three inches of rapidly boiling salted water and steamed, for ten minutes for one-and-a-half-pounders and as much as twelve minutes for two-pounders. If you boil more than one at a time, add a few minutes. After some trial and error you will be able to judge for yourself how long it takes the meat to reach the right temperature. It is better to err on the side of too little rather than too much, since you can always return an underdone lobster to the pot or broiler, but one that’s overdone can’t be rescued. Some people claim that headfirst into the pot is less painful than tail-first for the lobster, but how can they know? Others suggest anesthetizing them in ice water for half an hour, but since ice water isn’t much colder than the seawater in which they live, this doesn’t seem a likely solution, and leaving them in the freezer is probably no more humane than simply killing them at once. Whichever way they enter the pot, they will thrash about for a few seconds, but this is said to be only a final shudder of their primitive nervous system rather than an attempt to escape. I’m not so sure.
The boiled or steamed lobster will of course have turned bright red. Set it right side up, run some cold water over it, and when it is cool enough to handle, tie a large napkin around your neck, twist the tail from the body, and with a heavy knife split both body and tail lengthwise in two; then lift the tail meat out with a fork. If the lobster has cooked long enough, the meat will lift out easily. With the back of a heavy knife, crack the claws and knuckles and, using a small fork or lobster pick, extract the meat. For appearances’ sake, you might try to extract the claw meat intact by wiggling the small part of the claw until it breaks away and the meat slides out. Place the claw and knuckle meat in the body cavity along with the red coral (eggs) and the unctuous, greenish liver called tomalley. The lobster may now be served, either warm with an optional splash of lemon juice and an obligatory dip in drawn butter, or lightly chilled, but not ice-cold, with homemade mayonnaise, in this case thinned with a bit of lemon juice mixed with snipped chives and fresh tarragon. If the lobster seems tough, flavorless, yet cloying, you will know that you have overcooked it and will do better the next time. Likewise, if the meat sticks to the shell and seems watery, you will know that you have not cooked it enough.
The fashion in the 1950s in such dishes as lobster thermidor or Newburgh was to remove the cooked meat from the shell and finish it in a flavored béchamel with sherry, mushrooms,