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By Root 1060 0

before your eyes and you cook it immediately. This is due mostly to enzymes in the midgut gland (tomalley or liver), a creamy, pale green mass located in the thorax of the lobster, which are released as soon as a lobster dies and will start to break down its meat within hours. To keep this from happening, you can remove the tail and claw sections and discard the thorax. The tail and claw meat can then be stored in the refrigerator for a day or so without ill effect.

Since putting a live lobster on a hot grill is not an option (unless you ascribe to the Marquis de Sade school of cooking), you must kill the lobster before you grill it. There are two sides to consider before you kill for food. One is ethical and the other is technical. Ethically, we must come to terms with the fact that the killing is necessary, and technically we have to know how to do it as efficiently as possible.

The question asked most frequently when discussing this subject is, “Does the animal feel any pain?” We have been told repeatedly by experienced cooking teachers and chefs that shellfish feel no pain when they are killed. Yet whenever we drop a crab into a pot or split a lobster for grilling, the flailing of legs and claws is as good an imitation of pain as we have seen.

It is our belief that death hurts, and that those who tell themselves their victims feel no pain are only trying to ease their own discomfort. Yet if we are going to cook with shellfish we must kill them. The question then becomes not whether a lobster can feel pain (no one really knows how much pain a lobster feels; it doesn’t have a central nervous system, and its brain receives input only from its antennae and eyes), but how to perform the killing quickly and efficiently so the animal does not suffer unnecessarily.

Most people prefer to boil lobster, probably because it requires a minimum of hand-to-hand combat. To boil lobsters, bring enough seasoned liquid to a boil to cover all of the shellfish by an inch. The liquid can be salted water, a combination of wine or beer with water, or a complex brew of spices and herbs. Drop the lobster into the rapidly boiling water and cover the pot. When the pot returns to a boil the lobster has ceased living, and you can finish cooking it on the grill.

This is fine, except that the results taste more boiled than grilled. For a more authentic grilled flavor, we prefer to cook lobster totally over the fire, which means splitting and dividing the animal before cooking (see the sidebar at left).

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MOLLUSKS

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Mollusks are a weird bunch of critters. The group is large and diverse. It hardly seems possible that an oyster and an octopus could be related, and because most mollusks are covered by shell and lack distinguishable body parts, to the casual observer they may appear more like rocks than food. The key to their diversity is the adaptability of their three main body parts: (1) a tough, muscular foot for moving; (2) a nonsegmented visceral mass that includes the sensing, circulatory, digestive, and sexual organs; and (3) the mantle, an extension of the body wall that is responsible for excreting a shell and supporting the eyes and small tentacles that detect food or danger.

Mollusks that can be grilled fall into three classes: gastropods, bivalves, and cephalopods. Each combines the same body parts in a unique way. Abalone is the only gastropod that can be grilled. It has a single broad, shallow shell that covers a wide, muscular foot, which is the part we eat. Because abalone is tough, it should be marinated and grilled just until browned and heated through. Overcooking will make it inedibly tough.

Clams, mussels, oysters, and scallops are bivalves. They have two shells, hinged on one side. Clams have a large foot, which they use to burrow deep into sand, and a siphon that can be extended up to the sand surface and used to suck in passing food. Their mantle has diversified into a mechanism that helps them open and close their shells. A ligament on the narrow side of the shells attaches the shells and pulls them together,