Eating Read online

  I wish I could say that I snipped the rubber bands from the claws of the survivors, took them down to the bay, and let them go. Instead, I gathered them up and killed each one out of sight of the others. It was late. Guests were on their way, including my neighbor Craig Claiborne, the New York Times food writer, whom I had invited to try my new lobster recipe, and I had nothing else on hand except a shoulder of lamb, and no time to marinate and braise it. Moreover, to spare a lobster by eating a lamb was morally absurd. Though I offered this argument in my article, readers were offended and accused me of being as cold-blooded as the lobster itself. Nevertheless, my moral logic is correct—killing a lobster is no more brutal than eating a lamb killed by someone else. We are omnivorous: facing starvation, as our remote ancestors must have done much of the time, we will eat almost anything, including one another. In times of famine we still do. According to the anthropologist Marvin Harris, citing Cortés’s diarist, Bernal Diaz, the protein-starved Aztecs fattened their captives in cages and delivered them to priests to be butchered. Atop a pyramid, the priest removed the living heart while his assistants threw the arms and legs to the bottom, where they were boiled and served with moli sauce. Cortés himself witnessed an Aztec man eating a cooked baby for breakfast. Harris, who, like Freud, believes that our strongest taboos reflect our greatest temptations—we do not taboo putting our hand in the fire—conjectures that we taboo cannibalism not from high-mindedness but lest we be eaten ourselves. My friend Patrick O’Connell, the great chef/proprietor of the Inn at Little Washington, agrees. When I suggested some years ago that cooking for others is a gratuitous act of generosity, he said no: we feed others so that they won’t eat us.

  There are other ways to cook a lobster besides cutting it open and grilling it, but, whatever method you choose, care must be taken not to toughen the meat by overcooking it, nor should it be undercooked. Some years ago, in Provincetown, where I was visiting my dear friends the late Norman Mailer and his splendid wife, Norris, we stopped at a lobster shack to pick up a couple of three-pound females. Norman had been a cook in the army and still liked to tinker in the kitchen, but on this occasion I was left alone to make our supper.

  LOBSTER FRA DIAVOLO

  I made a spicy marinara in a large porcelain cocotte by softening in olive oil some chopped onion, garlic, jalapeño, and celery, then adding a large can of San Marzano tomatoes together with some fresh midsummer tomatoes from the garden, a good handful of dried oregano, and a generous pinch of sea salt and fresh-ground black pepper, and left it to cook down with a little red-wine vinegar to taste. While the sauce was thickening, I cut the lobster tails laterally into two-inch sections, and in a separate pan seared the exposed meat in olive oil over a high flame until the aroma of the scorched shells filled the Mailers’ seaside kitchen. I then twisted the claws from the bodies and boiled them for ten minutes or so, cracked them with the back of a heavy knife, and dropped them, along with the tail pieces, into the warm marinara. After a minute I turned off the stove, leaving the lobster to finish cooking in the marinara but taking care to serve the dish before the lobster sat too long in the sauce and became ropy and dry. You will know when the lobster is done if it slips nicely from the shell with a few pokes of a fork. If it’s underdone, it will stick to the shell. If it’s overdone, it will slip from the shell without your help. You may cut into a piece to make sure it’s opaque, resilient, but tender all the way through. With a shower of fresh Italian parsley from the garden, chopped not too fine, and a sprinkling of hot pepper flakes to taste, this is what old-fashioned Italian restaurants call “fra diavolo.”

  We ate the lobster over linguine with a bottle of Chablis beneath a perfect sky on the Mailers’ deck, facing the long curve of the town as it wraps itself around the bay.

  SWORDFISH WITH MARINARA

  The same marinara with an extra half-jalapeño, chopped;some pitted black olives;a small handful of capers, rinsed;a glass of dry white wine;fresh-ground black pepper; enough sea salt to bring up the flavor; and a generous handful of chopped Italian parsley to sprinkle atop the finished dish does wonders for swordfish. While the marinara is thickening, pat dry about eight ounces of very fresh swordfish per person, and in a hot steel pan filmed with a little olive oil brown the fish on both sides quickly, just enough to cook it through. Then serve the fish immediately, napped generously with the spicy marinara, sprinkled with the coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley. Be careful not to overcook the fish, which should be tender but firm. If the swordfish is left to linger in the sauce too long, the fish will become dry and the sauce watery.

  CHICKEN UNDER A BRICK

  When I reminded Norris recently of this lunch, she remembered another time, when we bought some young chickens—pound-and-a-half pullets, as poussins or game hens were called then, and what my late friend Sal lacono called teenagers—butterflied them by removing the spines, fitting the tips of the legs through slits in the skin, folding the wings back to expose the breast, and pounding the birds flat with the side of a cleaver. This made a considerable racket in Norris’s spotless kitchen, which must have alarmed her, since she remembers the scene vividly while I had forgotten it. The idea was to cook these chickens lightly oiled in a dry pan under a brick or similar heavy weight, so that if all goes well the chickens will emerge from the process looking like lacquered road kill, a chicken pancake with the curve of the legs and thighs a mere tracery against the crisp skin of the flattened breasts. This is a famous Italian dish—pollo al mattone, or chicken under a brick—with an intense chicken flavor, since nothing is lost in the cooking, especially the chicken’s own aromatic fat. Norris remembers that when I had placed the lightly oiled chickens in a hot steel pan and fitted two foil-wrapped bricks over them, so that the entire surface of the birds touched the pan to brown evenly, I said that I needed a nap and asked her to reduce the flame and turn the birds over every five minutes, so that they would cook through without burning on either side. This request, which I had also forgotten, must have alarmed her even more than my pounding the chicken, since she recalled the moment with a shudder. When I make this dish now, I use a veal pounder rather than a cleaver, and a heavy pot half full of water instead of a brick, a less dramatic but quieter technique. And I finish them in a 350-degree oven for four minutes rather than risk scorching them in the pan.

  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, mustard, cream, tomato paste, Pernod, Cognac, and so on, in various combinations, and return it to the shell or place it in a gratin dish, sprinkle it with crumbs and/or grated cheese, and finish under a broiler. These concoctions are seldom if ever seen today.

  I discovered my favorite lobster dish a few years ago in a book called Les Dimanches by Joël Robuchon, the French genius endowed with the minimalist culinary instincts of a haiku master. It is an utterly simple preparation which magically intensifies without violating the lobster’s unique essence. Robuchon prefers Brittany lobsters over the American variety, but this is mere chauvinism, for, except that the European lobster shell is blue and the American shell is greenish black, there is no discernible difference. Both turn red in the pot and taste the same. Equally fanciful is his tender description of lobster lovemaking when the female has molted but the male is still in his armor, and of the lobster’s suicidal affection for the conger eel. There is nothing fanciful, however, about his poetic treatment of lobster in Sauternes.

  ROBUCHON’S LOBSTER IN SAUTERNES

  For two as a main course at lunch, or for four as a first course at dinner, you should boil two pound-and-a-half lobsters in lightly salted water for three minutes, cool them under cold water, and remove and return to the pot the large claws and knuckles for three more minutes. Then remove and cool the claws under cold water, crack them open with the back of a heavy knife, and extract the meat as nearly intact as possible by wiggling the smaller of the two pincers until it breaks away. Discard the legs, and set the bodies and tails aside, along with the claw meat. In a heavy cocotte just large enough to hold the two lobster bodies and tails, melt a half-stick of butter and soften a handful of diced carrots. Then chop and add two or three shallots, and when they are soft, pour in three cups of good but not the most expensive Sauternes and a cup of orange juice, a thin slice of fresh ginger, julienned, and a good pinch of the best saffron, with just enough sea salt to bring the flavors together. Bring the mixture to a rapid boil, and poach the lobster bodies in the covered cocotte for three minutes. Turn off the flame, and let the cocotte sit, covered, for four minutes. When you lift the lid, the aroma will delight you. Remove the bodies, and save the upper part for bisque or discard. Warm the reserved claw meat in the Sauternes mixture without cooking it further, and remove the meat from the tails, saving the shells for bisque if you are so inclined. The meat should be rather firm but not tight. Cut it neatly into one-inch segments, and on a luncheon plate reconstruct the tail halves in their original curved configuration (in the shell, if you like) so as to surround the claw meat, and nap with the reduced and strained Sauternes sauce.

  LOBSTER BISQUE

  The best lobster bisque I have ever tasted comes from the Seafood Shop in Wainscott on Long Island. Their classic recipe yields thirty quarts and calls for ten pounds of lobster meat, four pounds of onions, two bunches of flat parsley, one pound of butter, one quart of sherry, a tablespoon each of white pepper and celery seed, the “guts”—i.e., the tomalley and coral from the cooked lobsters—eight quarts of water, one pound of lobster base (a commercial product, an intense reduction of lobster shells and vegetables), one pound of cornstarch, eight quarts of heavy cream, and three bunches of scallions. A quart of this rich bisque will serve four. Given the superiority and convenience of the Seafood Shop bisque, I no longer make my own, but when I did, I boiled a three- or four-pound lobster for fifteen or so minutes in just enough water to cover and a glassful of white wine, extracted the meat, cut it in one-inch pieces, and broke the shells into small pieces under a dish towel with a mallet. I melted a stick of butter in a four-quart kettle and sautéed a cup each of chopped carrots, onion, and celery until softened, then I added the lobster water, plus an additional quart of water, and chopped shells and simmered the mixture gently for an hour or so. Toward the end, I added the tomalley and coral, some dry sherry, a little white pepper, a dash of Tabasco, and salt to taste. Then I strained out the solids, including the shells, ground them in a food processor with a little of the liquid, and pressed the ground mixture through a strainer into the rest of the liquid, creating the equivalent of the Seafood Shop’s commercial lobster base. I mixed a tablespoon of cornstarch or arrowroot into a cup of the liquid, returned it to the pot with a half-cup of heavy cream and a little lemon juice to taste, and stirred the mixture over a lowflame until it thickened slightly; then I added the lobster meat, sprinkled some chopped green onion, some snipped tarragon and parsley on top, and adjusted the seasoning. This is not as complicated as it sounds, but if you factor in the cost of the ingredients and the time spent at the stove, the Seafood Shop bisque is the obvious choice. Perhaps someday the Seafood Shop will freeze its bisques and chowders and offer them online.

  JASPER WHITE’S PAN-ROASTED LOBSTER

  Eventually, the brilliance of Robuchon’s lobster in Sauternes will fade with familiarity, and I will return to an old favorite, Jasper White’s pan-roasted lobster, the very dish I was preparing when my lobsters raised their claws in horror and bolted. I discovered this dish in Jasper White’s Boston restaurant and later found the recipe in Julia Child’s In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs. It is practically foolproof, takes ten minutes from start to finish, and beautifully combines the tender lobster with olive oil, Cognac, shallots, chives, and tarragon, a heavenly combination. Turn the oven on to 500 degrees and bring a two-quart pot of water to a boil. Split two pound-and-a-half hard-shell lobsters by placing them top side up on a cutting board and plunging a stiff boning knife into the head, just behind the eyes, splitting the head in two. Then turn the knife the other way and split the body and tail. There is no reason to be squeamish about this. The lobster will die immediately, though it may continue to twitch as its nervous system subsides. Remove the black vein from the tail, discard the eight small legs, twist off the claws, and separate the lobster halves so that you can manipulate them easily when you pan-roast them. Poach the claws in the boiling water for five minutes. Cool them under cold water, and crack them open with the back of a heavy knife. Remove the claw meat in one p
iece if possible, by wiggling the small part of the claw, and in large chunks from the knuckles. Heat two skillets, each large enough to hold one lobster, or a single skillet large enough for two. I use a twelve-inch nonreactive skillet, which just accommodates the four halves. When the skillets are hot, film them with good-quality olive oil. When the oil shimmers, add the lobsters, shell side down, and turn them with tongs this way and that, until the shells turn red all over. Add more oil if necessary, but keep the flame high. In three or four minutes, the shells will be red. Turn the lobsters over for a minute or so, long enough to sear the meat, and pop the pan or pans into the hot oven for three minutes. Remove the pan or pans from the oven with a damp towel. The handles will be fiercely hot. Put the lobster halves on a platter, shell side down. The shells may be slightly charred at the edges. Test for doneness by lifting the meat from the shell with a fork. If it lifts out easily, it’s done. If not, return it to the oven for another minute or two. Then remove the lobsters to the platter. Add butter to the pan or pans, and sauté some chopped shallots until they soften. Pour three shot glasses of good but not great Cognac into the pan or pans, stand back, and flame the heated Cognac with a butane lighter or a long match, or simply heat the Cognac and tip the pan gently toward the flames until the vapors ignite. Don’t be alarmed—the flames will quickly subside. Then combine the contents if you are using two pans. Add a glass of medium-dry white wine, the claw meat, and some chopped tarragon and snipped chives, and reduce slightly over a high flame. Then, with the burner off, stir in half a stick of cold butter, a chunk at a time, stirring as each chunk melts, until the sauce has thickened slightly. Stuff the claw meat into the chest cavities and ladle the emulsion over the lobster. Serve while hot with homemade potato chips or matchstick potatoes. It sounds complicated, but after you’ve tried it a few times it will seem easy.