I spent the day retouching images for a corporate gig I had a few days ago and my memory card had a little surprise on it: a lobster from way back in August. I think we had this feast apropos of nothing, it was just a lazy, hazy Sunday afternoon, and we went to the fish store and ate a pair of lobsters after a simple steaming.

But tomorrow it is going to snow, and I am in the mood for stew. I’ve been using my crockpot a whole lot lately, and I’d love to break out of the lentil and black bean rut I’m in. So I’m doing stew with lobster. But not with the crockpot, it’s not respectful enough.

I found this recipe in The Times I’m going to try out. But I’ll make it with fewer lobsters, I think. And more tomalley croutons. Tomalley croutons!!

Chunky Lobster Stew With Tomalley Croutons

Ingredients

* 5 1-pound live lobsters
* Salt to taste, if desired
* 2 cups coarsely chopped onion
* 4 bay leaves
* 1 large tomato, about 1 pound, peeled
* 20 sprigs fresh chervil, optional
* 2 cups heavy cream
* 12 tablespoons unsalted butter
* 1 teaspoon finely minced garlic
* 2 tablespoons finely chopped onion
* 2 cups coarsely chopped white part of leeks
* 1 cup carrot rounds, sliced as thinly as possible
* Freshly ground black pepper to taste
* 1 loaf French bread, cut into 1/4-inch slices

Preparation

1. Bring enough water to the boil to cover the lobsters when they are added. Add salt and the lobsters and cook exactly four minutes after the water has returned to boiling.
2. Drain the lobsters immediately. Make a small half-inch crack in the solid shell that covers the head of each lobster. Make the crack slightly below the eyes of each lobster. Place the lobsters tail-side up, heads down, so that the liquid drains from the heads.
3. When the lobsters are cool enough to handle, tear off the tails and claws of each. Let the tomalley -the inner soft portion of the bodies-empty into a mixing bowl. Put the shells in a kettle.
4. Place the lobster tails on a flat surface and cut lengthwise with a sharp knife or cleaver. Pull away and discard the intestinal tract of each tail. Remove the tail meat and put the shells into the kettle.
5. Crack the claws and remove the meat. Put the claw shells into the kettle. Cut the claws and tail meat into bite-size pieces. There should be about three cups. Set aside.
6. To the lobster shells in the kettle add 10 cups of water, the two cups of coarsely chopped onion and the bay leaves. Bring to the boil.
7. Meanwhile, cut away and reserve the firm outer flesh of the peeled tomato. Set aside. Chop the inner portion of the tomato and add it to the kettle. Cut the reserved portion of the tomato into half-inch cubes. Set aside.
8. Pull away the leaves of the chervil. Set the leaves aside. Toss the remaining sprigs into the kettle. Cook the lobster broth about one hour, then add the heavy cream. Let simmer briefly.
9. To prepare the garnish for the stew, put four tablespoons of the butter into a saucepan. Add the garlic and finely chopped onion to the butter and cook about three minutes, stirring. Add this to the reserved tomalley and beat thoroughly to blend. Refrigerate.
10. Meanwhile, heat the remaining eight tablespoons of butter in a heavy saucepan and add the leeks and carrots. Cook about five minutes, stirring occasionally without browning. Add the cubed lobster meat, the tomato cubes and cook, stirring briefly, until heated through.
11. Strain the liquid from the kettle, discarding the solids. There should be about six cups. Pour this into the saucepan containing the lobster meat. Bring to the simmer and add salt and a generous grind of black pepper. Finely chop the chervil leaves and add them.
12. Meanwhile, preheat the broiler and toast the French bread slices on both sides. Spread one side of each with a thin layer of the tomalley mixture. Run briefly under the broiler until the tomalley mixture starts to bubble. Serve the hot soup with the pieces of tomalley toast on the side.

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I’ll let you know how it goes.

So, yeah, I thought it would be fun to make lobster dip for the Super Bowl. Or, really, I thought we’d have a Super Bowl party Sunday so that I could try to make lobster dip. I’d seen a couple of recipes, and it seemed like a fairly easy maneuver — the kind of thing I could do without a proper recipe.

Rachel was away for the weekend, eating oysters (pic below), and so I headed over to Fish Tales on Court Street, which had given us really excellent lobsters in the past. They’re on the pricey side, but usually very fresh. This time, not so much. The guy I got barely moved at all when I put him out on the kitchen table. A vague twitching of antennae was the only indication he would give. I don’t know why, but it seems sadder to cook a lobster that hasn’t just been vigorously moving around in the kitchen a few moments before — I guess a lot of people would say the opposite.

Anyhow, after he was cooked and shucked, I started combining ingredients in the blender. Like I often do, I basically approximated what I remembered of the recipes I’d seen online, not really paying as much attention to amounts of things. Take the lobster meat, add a little cayenne pepper, some light cream cheese, artichoke hearts, scallions, and Worcestershire sauce, press blend, and hope for the best.

In this case, I didn’t quite get the best. The dip wasn’t bad, objectively, but my other ingredients had completely obliterated the taste of the lobster — leaving me with a ton of dip that tasted pretty much the same as the can of Utz I could have bought for $3.

Susan from the Red Hook Lobster Pound (whose lobsters we’ve not yet tried, but will in the very near future) writes that my problem was probably lack of lobster concentration: “You would really need to make a very reduced lobster stock to add in order to make any cream base taste like lobster.”

Anyhow, here’s Rachel and her oysters. She seemed to have better luck with her project than I did with mine.

photo by Grant Cornett

Food styling by Vanessa Granof (Photo: Hans Gissinger)

Our love of lobster has leaked over into our professional lives; David wrote a piece for New York Magazine a few years ago about how to get the most out of your lobster. I thought it’d be fun to reprint his tips.

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Lobster Forensics
How to buy, steam, and suck out every last ounce of meat from your favorite crustacean.

1. The Claws
Separate the arms from the body. Hyperextend the lobster’s “thumb”and pull it off. Use a cracker or knife (or your hands) to break the shell, and pull out the meat with a fork. Because of the rubber bands placed around lobsters’ claws in tanks, the claw meat may have atrophied (a sign of a not-so-fresh lobster). The claw meat should be nearly as large as the shell around it.

2. The Head and Thorax
Additional meat can be found toward the front of the body cavity. Peel off the outer shell, split the body down the middle with your thumbs, and pick it apart (either with a fork or with your fingers).

3. The Knuckles
The connections between the claw and the body have sweet meat inside of them. Use a cracker or knife to break them into pieces and push the meat with a small fork.

4. The Walking Legs
When eating a whole lobster, you can break off the six small legs, separate them into sections, and suck the meat as through a straw. You can also press down on the legs with your fingers, moving from the ends toward the body.

5. The Tomalley
The light-green tomalley found inside the main body of the lobster is its liver and pancreas. The taste is rich, and while it can be eaten alone, many people like to mix it with bread crumbs to make a stuffing.

6. The Blood
A lobster’s blood is clear when the animal is living and turns into an opaque white gel when cooked. You’ll find this throughout the claws and body. It’s bland, but definitely edible.

7. The Roe
The roe (unfertilized eggs) in the body of a female lobster is dark green when raw, but turns bright red when cooked. It is tasty on its own, but is also used in sauces, bisques, and stocks.

8. The Tail
Pinch near the top of the tail and twist to pull it from the body. Either split the tail down the center with a knife or squeeze the edges of the tail shell together and then pull them apart, snapping the shell. The tail meat can then be removed in one piece. Pull off the sections of the tail fan at the tip for small bits of extra meat.

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The Ultimate Boat Snack

In Season: Lobster

Posted to New York Magazine by nymagstaff on June 20, 2008

Click to Play | View Details

Jose Luis Martinez shows how to extract the most lobster meat.

Mermaid Inn chef Jose Luis Martinez suggests a lobster-sandwich recipe that should be prepared in advance and eaten onboard your skiff. Makes 6 sandwiches.

6 2-pound lobsters
1 small red onion, finely diced
4 stalks celery, finely diced
12 sprigs chive
6 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cups mayonnaise
Salt and pepper
6 brioche sandwich rolls
6 tablespoons melted butter

Chop the meat into ¼-inch sections and place in a large bowl. Add the finely chopped onion, celery, chives, and lemon juice to the bowl with the lobster meat. Add mayonnaise and salt and pepper to taste.
Cut each brioche roll in half and lightly brush butter on both halves. On a griddle, place the buns buttered side down and cook until they are golden brown. Take off the griddle and place about 7 ounces of lobster salad on the roll.

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Pick (and Then Cook) a Good One

Buying
“When they pull it out of the water, its tail should be flapping,” says Brendan Hayes, retail director of the Lobster Place. “If it’s limp, that’s a sign of a soon-to-be-dead lobster.” A lobster with a softer shell has recently molted and is likely to have more water weight and less meat. Cook within 24 hours of purchase.

Cooking
While it’s popular to boil lobsters, steaming with a small amount of salt water helps retain juice and flavor. Put about an inch of water in a covered pot, adding 2 tablespoons of salt for every quart, bring to a rolling boil, and place the lobsters in. A 1½-pound lobster should cook for about 15 minutes, while a 4-to-5 pounder should cook for 22 to 24 minutes, at which point the body will be bright red.

Read more about lobster in New York Magazine.

We love lobsters. In fact, we think they rock. Hard. So here we’ll be talking about lobsters, giving you recipes, lobster history and fun facts, and keeping you apprised of the lobster industry.

And we’ll have some pretty pictures of lobsters too, because one of us is a lobster-obsessed photographer.

Thanks for joining us, let’s get cracking!