Jane Grigson's Fish Book - Jane Grigson [108]
Buy and cut up 2 small live or 1 large lobster. Turn to p. 340 and follow the recipe for scallops in gin, omitting the seasoned flour. The lobster meat can be removed from the shells while the sauce is reducing.
OMELETTE DU BARON DE BARANTE
This recipe comes from a small booklet produced by François Minot, chef-patron at the famous Hôtel du Côte d’Or at Saulieu. One of his grandfathers – he is fifth in a line of chefs – spent some time in Russia, as did the famous chef Edouard de Nignon, who invented this recipe. The Baron de Barante was one of the greatest gourmets of his time.
Serves 6–8
500 g (1 lb) mushrooms, sliced
salt, pepper
butter
1 sherry glass of good port
about 600 ml (1 pt) double cream
12 thick slices cooked lobster tail
18 eggs
300 ml (10 fl oz) Mornay sauce*
grated Parmesan cheese
Season mushrooms and cook in some butter. Add port and reduce liquid by half. Pour the cream in, stir it well, and add the lobster. Cover and cook very gently, so as not to make the lobster tough and tasteless.
Make one or more omelettes with the eggs, seasoned in the usual way. Put the lobster filling inside, and roll the omelette (s) over. Pour over some Mornay sauce, sprinkle with grated cheese, and put under a hot grill until the cheese turns a fine golden glaze.
DUBLIN BAY PRAWNS OR NORWAY LOBSTERS OR LANGOUSTINES
Nephrops norvegicus
The first time I ate an unknown shellfish – unknown, that is, to me and to most English people then – called ‘scampi’, I thought I had discovered the secret of an earthly paradise. It was in Venice, at the very beginning of the fifties. Twenty years later, a hundred, two hundred pub lunches later, I am not so sure. How can this plateful of desiccated catering clichés, surrounded by chips, and mocked by a sprig of parsley, have anything to do with those Adriatic scampi? Or with those miniature lobsters, the langoustines of French restaurants?
And yet the Multilingual Dictionary of Fish and Fish Products, compiled by a galaxy of marine experts, backed by the Fisheries Division of the OECD, insists that they are all the same; whatever you call them, whatever you do to them, they are Nephrops norvegicus of the same family as the lobster. One cannot argue with authority of this kind.
When the first edition of this book was published, you would have been lucky to find scampi still in their shells, and if you did, they would have already been boiled to a coral pink more beautiful than the lobster’s lustier tone. Thank goodness, things have improved and more enlightened fishmongers sell fresh langoustines.
If you are successful in finding some, serve them on their own or as part of a mixed array of shellfish (oysters, mussels, clams, crab) all on a bed of ice with a little seaweed to show off their beauty. This allows people the pleasure of shelling them (only the tails are eaten). A big bowl of lemon-flavoured mayonnaise should be on the table as well – never use malt vinegar for fish, least of all for shellfish. You can tartarize it or not as you please.
Alternatively the shelled tails can be reheated in a Newburg sauce, like the boiled lobster on p. 213, or in a creamy curry sauce*; or in a whisky and cream sauce – many of them do, after all, come from Scotland, or rather from Scottish waters by way of Scottish fishing boats, see p.220.
GRATIN DE LANGOUSTINES
From the excellent Hôtel de France at Montmorillon, in Vienne, comes this simple dish of langoustine tails, mushrooms and cream.
Serves 8
300 g (10 oz) mushrooms, sliced
60–90 g (2–3 oz) butter
1¼ kg (2½ lb) shelled langoustine tails
750 ml (25 fl oz) double cream
salt, freshly ground black pepper
grated nutmeg
pinch of cayenne
60 g (2 oz) grated Gruyère
Cook the mushrooms in the butter. When they are nearly done, add the tails. Butter a