CULINARY SMACKDOWN: LOBSTER THREE, MAKE THAT FOUR, WAYS

When I read that April's Culinary Smackdown (hosted by last month's winners, Heff and Donna, of Heff's Bar and Grill) would feature lobsters, I couldn't resist throwing my hat into the ring. For three reasons. 1) I love to eat lobster. 2) I've cooked whole lobster only once before and thought this would be a fine excuse to splurge and try again. 3) During the course of some 25 years of exchanging lobster gifts with my sister, I've accumulated a crazy collection of lobster paraphernalia (like the lobster welcome mat above). Seriously, how many people do you know who own a lobster pinata? (I've had this guy since the early '90s. When people ask when I'm going to break him open, I say never!)

Since I'm green in the lobster cooking arena (and frankly, a bit squeamish about handling live lobsters), I emailed my friend Cindie: "May need partner in culinary crime." Cindie was in. And, as it turned out, so was her husband, Odie. We settled on a mutually convenient Friday night for our undertaking, and when I learned they had passed up another invite for the same evening, I knew there was no turning back.

For a good week, Cindie and I googled, researched, consulted, emailed, talked, and gawked over numerous recipes and our overall menu (with Odie in the mix, we would need to satisfy diverse palates). Plus platter options, color schemes, and possible flowers to grace the table (ok, since we were cooking at her house, that would be the bar, not the table, but you get the idea). Cindie was really getting into this blogger's accomplice thing.

When it came down to it, we both had a hankering for plain old boiled lobster with butter, but that seemed a little too simple for the Smackdown (my apologies to anyone who opted to go that route). Eventually, we decided to do lobster three ways. No, not a Cincinnati three-way. Or the kind of three-way Heff might be thinking of (lol). We settled on: 1) An old-school Lobster Thermidor using Julia Child's recipe. 2) A lobster ceviche (Cindie thought it would look pretty on the platter). And 3) A straight-up boiled lobster with butter.

Time to get ingredients in place. I ordered three lobsters from my favorite local fishmonger, Kevin Smith at Lobsta Bakes of Maine.

(No, that's not Kevin.) Kevin is, however, originally from a fishing family in Maine. Each Thursday he has lobster flown in, and many other fine fish to offer as well.

On my way to Cindie's on our appointed Friday, I picked up my/her/our lobsters, some scallops, and three mini-baguettes fresh from the Lobsta Bakes oven, along with three cans of Moxie, which, as I wrote about earlier in the week, is the official soft drink of Maine.

While I had (unsurprisingly) failed to fulfill my make-ahead agenda (roasting asparagus and making its sauce), when I arrived at Cindie's at 4:30, she had completed her appointed prep work - making a blueberry pie. I don't know whether blueberry pie has achieved designation as the "official" dessert of Maine, but it is certainly associated with Maine in popular culinary culture.

First, we started the long, slow process of boiling water and white wine in a big old pot. 

We added onion, carrots, celery, and parsley. Plus bay leaves, peppercorns, tarragon, and thyme tied in cheesecloth (a bouquet garni).

While we waited for the pot to boil, we got that asparagus roasted.

And I made that sauce: Sauce Maltaise, or blood orange hollandaise sauce, which I discovered recently. Sounds fancy-schmancy, but this recipe, prepared in a food processor or blender, is a simple and close to foolproof version that doesn't entail a double-boiler. Basically it's just egg yolks, butter, lemon juice, and blood orange zest and juice (you can substitute regular orange for blood orange). Notorious for fiddling with recipes, The Intuitive Eggplant couldn't resist adding some chopped shallots and a bit of tarragon. Cindie thought I added too much lemon juice (and maybe I did, since squeezing citrus into a tablespoon is a pain in the butt and I tend to be a bit lax with measurements). Still, I thought it tasted great with both the asparagus and our (eventually) boiled lobster.

I also did my prep work for the ceviche. The lovely photo from Saveur magazine that inspired Cindie to suggest ceviche was of a recipe full of Asian ingredients I didn't have on hand or time to seek out. So I agreed to go the ceviche route and then just made it pretty much the way I always do - with lime, garlic, shallots, cilantro, serrano, a little thyme, chipotle, and tomato (I forgot the ground, toasted cumin seed this time).

I especially like the way raw scallops, thinly sliced, take to the lime juice and seasonings in "my" ceviche, and was glad I'd bought some to include. Frankly, I thought they were tastier than the (eventually cooked) lobster we added to the mix.

Here's how the finished ceviche looked (after Cindie broke the matching glass, our first debacle of the night). As it turned out, we didn't have room on the lobster platter for ceviche anyway, and after what happened with the platter, I was glad I'd gone ahead and photographed this presentation.

 

We also went ahead and sauteed mushrooms in butter with lemon juice, per Julia, for the Thermidor sauce.

So much for the easy stuff. The pot was boiling, Cindie's husband was home, and it was time to get serious.

We opened up the box to check out our crustaceans.

Odie was happy to remove the lobsters from their claw confines.

Photos, of course, needed to be taken.

Cindie grabbed her camera and got in on the photogging action too.

Some ritual taunting of Oscar, the overly curious Labradoodle, was also in order.

Then Odie plunged the first lobsters into the pot.

We debated back and forth about how long to cook our one-and-a-half-pounders. Cindie thought most modern recipes recommend 10-12 minutes. Julia says 20 minutes for 2-pound lobsters. I was inclined to go with an oft-repeated rule of thumb that says they're done when the antennae pull out easily. Well, we cooked them past the 12-minute mark, and maybe even past the 15-minute mark, until Odie finally yanked out a doggone antenna and we pronounced them done.

Not only done, but probably a bit overdone, we thought when we finally ate them. However, we would have a chance to improve our timing with the third, straight-up lobster, still to come, as we wanted to eat it hot.

Here are our first two, sitting for a minute in the sink, until we transferred them to a cooler. For the Thermidor, they would need to be cool enough to handle and split lengthwise. For the ceviche, they would need to be cold.

While the lobsta cooled, Cindie and I introduced Odie to blogs, by showing him mine and Heff's. We had tried to explain what a blog is, but it didn't really click until he saw one for himself. Now Odie thinks blogs are cool, mentioned repeatedly that he "likes those comments," and went on to tell his buddies all about blogs, his new discovery.

Time to get serious again. The recipe says to add the mushroom cooking juices to the kettle (aka big old pot). But since we had more boiling liquid in our big old pot than Julia called for, AND wanted to reserve some of it for cooking the third lobster, AND we were halving the recipe, AND I didn't think we had a high enough ratio of wine to water in the boiling liquid, I started doing as I usually do, adjusting as I go. We didn't have much in the way of mushroom cooking juices, so we poured some of the boiling liquid into the skillet the mushrooms were sauteed in, added some more wine, then let it reduce.

Meanwhile, Cindie began the roux in a second skillet (ok, so we used skillets instead of saucepans per the recipe, but I think we still ended up with just as many dirty dishes as called for in the original). Anyway, Cindie pointed out an ambiguity from Julia. The recipe says that once the butter and flour have been cooked together without browning, "off heat" you're supposed to beat in the lobster cooking liquid, then boil, stirring for one minute. However, you can't boil "off heat." So we returned the skillet to the burner for the requisite boiling, and moved on to the next step: splitting the lobsters.

Cindie and I realized we suck at splitting lobsters, even with our "good" kitchen knives, so after mangling one, we turned the job over to Odie and his knife. Thank goodness we had an experienced hunter and fisherman to help us out.

He did a far more successful job of cutting his cleanly in half.

Next, Cindie and I set upon the task of removing the lobster meat. To be honest, I'm not sure we actually managed to figure out which were the "sand sacks in the heads and the intestinal tubes," which you're supposed to discard, vs. the lobster coral and green matter, which you're supposed to rub through a fine sieve into a mixing bowl. But we at least set the heads aside (to been turned into lobster stock, along with the remaining shells, at a later date), so I think we're safe there. There wasn't a whole lot of "green matter" but we dutifully tried to rub it through a sieve, where most of it stuck, and combined what little we could salvage with dried mustard, egg yolks, cream, and pepper.

At this point, you're supposed to beat the previously reduced sauce into the mixing bowl stuff "by driblets." But we started to get derailed and instead did it the other way around, beating the mixing bowl stuff into the sauce. I'm sure our derailing was due to the complexity of the instructions, not the beers we'd consumed as we got hungrier and hungrier. Here's our sauce (which by that point had become quite thick) "filmed with cream," which the recipe says you're supposed to do twice, although we only did it once. I haven't a clue what the purpose of "cream filming" is, and I'd say this is more of a douse than a film, but, oh, well.

 Now, I've never felt intimidated about making recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking (not that I've made a substantial number of them). I generally like the way it methodically breaks a recipe down into sensible steps. But making this recipe for the first time, even with two reasonably experienced home cooks joining forces, the "whiles" and the "thens" seemed off. At the same time Cindie was working on the sauce, I was trying to remove the lobster meat from the shells and cut it into something resembling 3/8-inch pieces, which then needed to be returned to a saute pan (ok, we reused another skillet).

You're supposed to saute the cut-up lobster with "foaming" butter until it achieved a "rosy" color, THEN add cognac to it, and THEN reduce it by half. But alas, recipe dyslexia overcame me again, and I added the cognac before real "rosiness" was achieved (the red bits in the photo above were just as red before and after this step).

At one point, our sauce actually looked like this:

But during the time it took to accomplish other steps, the sauce broke.

Nonetheless, we persevered, combining the cognac'd lobster with the long-since sauteed mushrooms and something resembling the prescribed 2/3 of the broken sauce, stuffing the result into Odie's lovely split shells, and topping them with parmesan. Here they are before we put them in the oven and topped them with the remaining sauce.

We also boiled the third lobsta straight up. Here's its much more properly cooked tail:

Five hours after we started, we were finally ready to eat.

Fortunately I snapped the photo above before what happened next. Cindie thought it would make for an attractive photo if we set the asparagus/Thermidor platter on a blue placemat. Reaching for that placemat, she tipped the platter and everything landed on the floor. She managed to pick up most of it before I could grab my camera.

Odie said he wished he had a camera to catch the look on my face when she dumped it. But Cindie coolly pronounced it "Deconstructed Lobster Thermidor" - our inadvertent fourth lobsta dish of the night.

After the cursing and laughter subsided, we gave up on worrying what things looked like and just set in to eatin'.

Yep, the Sauce Maltaise never got transferred to a more attractive dish than that Cool Whip container, and we didn't really care.

Lessons learned:

1. Cook with friends who will humor you, especially when it comes to delayed dining for ambitious projects. Bonus points if they have a dishwasher. This evening was so much more fun than if I'd earnestly tackled this dish by my lonesome!

2. A hunter, and a hunter's knife, are your friends. If, after the knives are put away, you can persuade a hunter . . .

. . . to don the lobster apron and lobster claw oven mitts your sister gave you for your 40th birthday, so much the better.

3. If you experience anxiety trying to make a lobster (or other) dish from a Julia Child recipe, just remember this:

4. Even a challenging meal is always better if it ends in dessert, especially if it's one you didn't have to make yourself.

With thanks to the Culinary Smackdown crowd for letting me join in for my first time at this rodeo, and much appreciation to "Team Eggplant." Looking forward to everyone else's lobsta posts. And remember, Odie "likes the comments."


Eggy

DINING JOURNAL: BELLEVUE BISTRO

I love brunch.

And this weekend's meet-up with a former colleague and his wife gave me the opportunity to try Bellevue Bistro's for the first time.

Located just across the Ohio River from downtown Cincinnati, the town of Bellevue, Kentucky, boasts a revitalized main street (Fairfield Avenue) filled with galleries, gift shops, and restaurants. With a couple of tables outside and wooden tables, a tin ceiling, and walls filled with eclectic artwork inside, Bellevue Bistro is a comfortable, casual spot offering thoughtfully conceived and carefully prepared dishes.

My friends each chose a main dish I'm sure I would enjoy. Hers was the Veggie Saute, with tomato, bell peppers, mushrooms, red onions, avocado, cheese, and eggs over sweet potatoes and squash.

He chose the Hot Brown Benedict, featuring the classic elements of a Kentucky Hot Brown - bacon, turkey, tomato, cheese and Hollandaise - served over fresh-made biscuits and topped with crab.

After Buzz's recent scrapple post, I decided to revisit goetta and ordered The Bellevue, with goetta, cheese, red onions, and eggs over rosemary potatoes.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, goetta is a German peasant food beloved by many in this old German city of Cincinnati (we even have multiple goetta festivals). Made of pin oats and ground meat (usually pork shoulder and other pork by-products) and typically seasoned with bay leaf, rosemary, and thyme, goetta is formed into a loaf, then sliced and fried, and served with either savory ingredients (such as the ones I had) or sweet accompaniments (e.g., maple syrup). The stuff on the top and left here is the goetta:

My goetta wasn't especially crispy, although with the eggs, cheese and potatoes, I enjoyed the dish. While many in this town would consider it sacrilege to admit, I just don't think I'm particularly fond of goetta (I would probably have been happier to substitute bacon, but that's me). If you are a goetta fan or curious to try goetta, Bellevue Bistro also offers goetta breakfast sandwiches on whole wheat in a variety of permutations: straight up; with blackberry jam; with American cheese and maple syrup; or with eggs and American cheese.

The dishes we ordered (above) were all hearty plates of food, in the $6-$8 range. Also on the menu are a French toast made with cinnamon bread from the excellent local Shadeau Breads ($6.25) and waffles from another local favorite, Taste of Belgium, whose Liege, Belgium-style waffles are also available at Findlay Market in Cincinnati, North Market in Columbus, Ohio, by mail-order, and, as I learned from their website, our local Whole Foods stores. My friends split this one, served "loaded," with chocolate sauce, berry sauce, and whipped cream, for around $5.

The brunch menu includes a range of other egg-and-rosemary-potato dishes, including one with sausage and apples, and a crab and bacon "surf and turf." An inventive "breakfast salad" of field greens, fried eggs, chopped bacon, tomatoes, and cheese caught my eye, and a number of specials were available as well.

Brunch is served Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 to 2:00. Arriving at 12:30, we were also offered the lunch menu, which is served through the week and includes soups, sandwiches, and a wide variety of salads. Dinner, from a varying menu that appears to be seasonally driven, is served Wednesday through Saturday. Bellevue Bistro is a charming spot where you can catch up with old friends, as I did, and enjoy some tasty food as well. I'll definitely return for more.

POSITIVELY MONDAY: MOXIE

In common parlance, "moxie" connotes determination, initiative, gumption, spunk. "The ability to face difficulty with spirit and courage," quoth Webster's. Couldn't we all use a little moxie, especially when it comes to Mondays?

Turns out, Moxie is also a soft drink - in fact, the official soft drink of Maine (as I discovered while preparing for this week's Culinary Smackdown: Lobster). 

Moxie was supposedly invented in 1876 by one Dr. Augustin Thompson, born in Union, Maine, as a patent medicine or "nerve food" he claimed to be effective against "paralysis, softening of the brain, nervousness, and insomnia." Well, now, we mustn't have any brain softening around here!

The Eggplant thinks Moxie tastes a bit like a not-too-sweet root beer. The original, inventor Thompson claimed, contained an extract from a rare but unspecified South American plant (the mythic Amazonian moxie bush, perhaps?). The current version, in addition to carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup and/or sugar (wtf?), caffeine, citric acid, and those oh-so-encouraging "natural and artificial flavors," contains "extractives" of gentian root, which author and Moxie fan E. B. White described as "the path to the good life."

So . . . without suggesting she necessarily ingest this stuff, I'd like to toast blogging buddy Making Space, who is joining me in celebrating Positively Mondays. Here's wishing you a fine spring week free of anxiety, insomnia, or anything you might fret is the early stages of brain mushiness, MS:)

And to all: Put a little pep in your step and a little glide in your stride (as local DJ "Mr. Rhythm Man" likes to say) . . . one foot in front of the other on that "path to the good life" or at least till Friday comes. Here's hoping you face down the beginning of your week with verve and elan, spirit and courage, and a smile on your face.

If you have a Positively Monday post of your own to share, please let us know in the comments. And if you'd like to participate in the future, we'd love to have you.

Happy Monday!
eggy

POSITIVELY MONDAY: MOXIE?

Drat! Yes, drat, I say. I had a whole post, lovingly prepared, and, so I thought, properly scheduled. Then it disappeared. Nowhere to be accessed in edit or view land. Not viewable, publishable,  copyable or reconstructable. Have tried so many times to figure this thing out that either there will still be nothing there when I wake up in the morning or my original will have been posted about 417 times.

MS and Shamu, I need injections of your cake and unpronounceable (to me) spring roll STAT.

Will try to muster up enough moxie to address this befuddling failure of intended post when I get home from work tomorrow evening. Until then, I am thoroughly flummoxed, and must sign off in order to get to bed and stare down another Monday. 

POSITIVELY MONDAYS, v. 2.0

I hate Mondays. Always have, and probably always will (at least until I retire).

So something I've found myself evolving here are what I now dub Positively Monday posts, a little way to psyche myself up for going back to work, and put a positive spin on my outlook for the week before it has a chance to get the upper hand.

This all started as an excuse to post one of my photos I really liked, without the fuss and bother of coming up with a bunch of words to accompany it, which I titled "Starting the Week on a Sweet Note":

Then I returned from a great weekend in Louisville and wanted to get a photo up of these crazy red penguins at the 21-C Hotel without waiting until I had time to put together the full-blown trip recap I had in mind:

The next thing I knew, I was inspired to photograph even more for my Monday posts.

And realizing I could use them as a creative way to recycle leftovers.

Or I could snag a web image to acknowledge the efforts of other bloggers who made me smile.

So . . . it turns out I have a blogging friend who's interested in participating in "Positively Mondays." And if anyone else wants to join in, you are most welcome. The rules are: There are no rules. No weekly themes. No lengthy research or web-surfing required. You can include a photo, or not. You can include words - a few, a lot, or none. You are the queen or king of your own bloggy domain, so do whatever you wish. This is just a chance to do something a little different, and bring a smile or a grin to your own face (and maybe a few others). Hey, we can't change Mondays, but maybe we can improve how we look at them.

Check back next Monday, when I have a special post planned for my new Positively Monday compadre. And if you decide to join in too, leave a comment so we can find you.

EASTER: DOWN BY THE RIVER

Here it is already, positively Tuesday. Time to share a few quick pics of my Easter weekend.

Easter morning strata, with cottage ham, asparagus, mushrooms, bell peppers and some of the cheese I brought back from Louisville (OK, it was actually Easter afternoon by the time we ate it).

For dinner, Cindie and I put together a menu that would please everyone, including her husband and her father (here he is with his new girlfriend - just like teenagers, I tell ya).

Which meant crossing a number of things off the list. No lamb (sighs The Eggplant), but this standing rib roast was mighty fine.

Cindie made her twice-baked potatoes, and I made my asparagus with bacon, garlic, nuts, and blue cheese (adapted from this recipe; we removed the men's asparagus before adding the blue cheese, those picky eaters). I also made the horseradish sauce and an impromptu jus (oops, I'd thought Cindie was in charge of that, but am always game to put something together on the fly). You can glimpse a bit of the lovely medium rare beef here, but this was much more an eating-with-friends-and-family occasion than a photo op.

And for dessert, Cindie's angel food cake with strawberries. P.S., Cindie, I finally found room for a slice after you went to bed :)

After dinner we hung out on the deck, laughing and telling stories.

Even the dogs had a good time. Then again, why wouldn't they? They got to chase each other around AND lick the plates.

While everyone else's bellies were full, Oscar still wanted his rubbed.

Thanks, Cindie and Odie, for having me. And for the use of your ice pack and letting me keep from being on my feet all day prepping Easter dinner. The injured toe is finally improving, and I hope to be back in culinary sparring condition for our lobster collaboration this weekend.

Of course, what I'm really looking forward to this week is putting my feet up tomorrow night and being inspired by the culinary sparring on the Top Chef Masters 2 debut. But how can you go wrong with a little lobsta to round out the week?

     The (less-hobbling) Eggplant

PORCHETTA! IN CINCINNATI!

I have yet to try the Neapolitan pizza at Capri Tavola Calda, having become smitten with their sandwiches. Since Capri opened late last year half a block from my office, I’ve tried a few of their specials and soups and been working my way through their panini menu, including the meaty Napoli

and the Capri, featuring eggplant:

Both are served on a fragrant rosemary ciabatta roll I’ve become very fond of. Their baguettes are respectable too.

Yesterday I noticed a panino du jour dubbed the Antony, described as home-made porchetta, eggplant, provolone, lettuce, and tomato on baguette. Hmm, porchetta. That rang a food-web-surfing bell. Amateur Gourmet had raved about a porchetta sandwich he’d had at the NYC restaurant of the same name. Porchetta (the restaurant) recently made news by shipping sandwiches to troops in Afghanistan. And I’ve come across enough other mentions of porchetta that it had seeped into my consciousness as something I was curious to try. Here I had that opportunity. And it was stop-me-in-my-pork-lovin’-tracks delicious. Roast pork to kick the butt of any other roast pork I’ve ever had. Meltingly moist and rich, deeply flavored with garlic and herbs.

Not everyone who works at Capri always gets everything right. In this case, the person I ordered from had to look at the specials board to figure out how to spell “Antony.” Then the young men assembling sandwiches were stumped, asking each other about “porCHetta” (the pronunciation is “porKetta”), and the advertised eggplant was left off my sandwich. But when I bit into that succulent pork, any potential complaints vanished. Clearly, the chef here knows what he’s doing, even if other employees do not.

When I got home from work, some googling was in order to learn more about the dish I’d eaten and figure out whether porchetta was something I might be able to make myself.

Traditional porchetta is apparently made from deboned pork, rolled with meat, fat, skin and layers of garlic, rosemary, fennel-studded stuffing (herb and stuffing preferences vary from family to family in Italy), then roasted at high heat over wood.

I also learned that porchetta is often served as a whole roast, although sandwiches are increasingly popular, at least in the U.S., and provolone as a porchetta sandwich ingredient is somehow controversial. Capri’s incorporation of provolone, fresh leaf lettuce, and thin-sliced tomatoes didn’t bother me, nor did the eggplant omission. At $6.85 for the Antony, the generous serving of pork on the 8” baguette was the clear star of the dish for me, but we now how picky downtown lunch buyers can be if they don’t think they’re getting enough “stuff” for their money.

If you care to lay out more than $100, you can order one of these lovelies from Porchetta Primata, which partners with an artisanal pork farm in Kentucky; some can be mail-ordered through Costco.

The New York Times says, yes, you can make porchetta at home, offering a recipe adapted from Olives and Oranges, a cookbook written by the chefs of NYC’s Porchetta restaurant. Esquire has published a Batali recipe, Anne Burrell has one on the FoodTV website, and I found yet another one from a globe-trotting blogger here.

While I don’t see myself springing for the mail-order option anytime soon, I’ve added trying my hand at porchetta to my lengthy culinary to do list. Even if I go with a more modest adaptation of this Italian classic, it is still likely to knock the socks off most of my previous roast pork attempts. And until I get around to preparing it myself, the next time I pick up lunch at Capri Tavola Calda, I think I’ll add a note to the suggestion box sitting next to the cash register: “More porchetta, please.”

Happy Easter weekend to all. May you be blessed with warm spring weather, a bountiful table, and the company of good friends/family to share it with. I’ll be back next week and am looking forward to checking out the new entries in The Karmic Kitchen’s Dim Sum Sunday – PEEPS, Part II.