About Cooking Lobster

Say hello to the sea rat:


Going for a swim:


and… After:


Goes nicely with a chilled white wine from Rueda (just a few kilometers north of here):


So I faced the moral-ethical dilemma about cooking lobster, live lobster, until it's dead. Since buying lobster already prepared or in a can poses no such problem I figure I ought to face the food I eat, buck up, and kill it myself. As for whether the lobster feels pain or not… I don't know. There are opinions on both sides of the issue but given that a lobster has very few neurons (100 thousand versus 100 billion in human types [that's 1 million times fewer]) there's reasonable weight on the side that says lobsters are neurologically challenged creatures. Related to the land-based scorpion.

The classical technique is to dump them into a pot of boiling water. I opt for the warming cold water up to a boil variant.

Boiled Lobster

Ingredients

• 1 lobster (1 kilo [½#])
• 1 large pot of water
• 1 handful of coarse salt
• a lid for the pot
• heat

Procedure

1. Fill pot with cold water (enough to generously cover the lobster)
2. Add a handful of salt
3. Place lobster in pot
4. Place lid on pot
5. Place pot on heat
6. Max heat until water is bubbling (actual bubbles rising, not just sticking to the sides of the pot)
   
7. Simmer vigorously for 11 minutes
8. Dump water out
9. Fill again with cold water (to stop the cooking process)
• Or dump lobster into ice water or another pot with cold cold water
  

Notes

1. 13 minutes for a large lobster
2. It will turn a real red color well before it's completely cooked
3. Lobster's "done" when you can pull out/off one of the whiskers/feelers/antennae or one of the tiny legs
4. If you see the meat separating from the shell that's also a sign it's done (or practically over-done)
5. Avoid overcooking the lobster because the meat toughens up.
6. Timings are for European style lobster which will be, by (north) american standards less well done that you might be used to
7. Everything inside is edible except the head and the gills. The green and the red stuff you encounter in the lobster is tasty too (it's liver and lobster-caviar respectively)
   

Fresh lobster is delicious and well worth doing, yourself, at least once.

Other info snagged from the net (American Timings)

Method	Amount	Time
Boiled	1 lb.	12 - 15 minutes
	1-1/2 lbs.	15 - 20
	2-3 lbs.	20 - 25
	3-1/2 - 5 lbs.	25 - 30

¡ Lobster ! Avocado Salad: Ensalada de Bogavante y Aguacate

The same salad as last Thursday but now with real live Canadian lobster (actually, come to think of it, the lobster was dead - - or at least it ended up that way).

I could choose between a local lobster from Galicia (here in Spain), which was gigantic, or a smaller one that came all the way from Canada. I went Canadian because 1) I am one myself and 2) it's only a salad we're making here and I didn't need all that much lobster meat.

The idea is to compare the fake lobster tails that went on Thursday's salad. Presumably the real stuff will be better. The fake was a little bit gummy/floury for my taste.

Apart from taste, the real thing is about 7 times more expensive than the fake lobster - - hopefully worth it.

Avocado Lobster Salad

Ingredients

serves 2

• mixed greens
• some rucula [rocket]
• 1 lobster (tail and claw meat)
  
• 1 avocado (sliced longways)
  
• avocado vinaigrette
• 5 T virgin olive oil
• 1 T red wine vinegar
• ¼ avocado (the bits left over from slicing the avocado)
• ¼ t salt

Procedure

1. put greens on a plate
2. distribute rucula around the rim
3. place lobster tail on top - - sliced thinly, placed judiciously and decoratively
   
4. surround, symmetrically, with avocado slices
5. blend oil, vinegar, avocado bits and salt
• drizzle over the salad

Notes

1. Using enough salt is really important in the vinaigrette. People tend to under-salt oil and vinegar salad dressings
   
2. A stick blender is ideal for making the vinaigrette
3. The non-tail/claw meat (all the bits left over after you use the big chunks) can be shredded and used in tomorrow's green salad. A little touch of deliciousness to an otherwise mundane dish.
4. From a 610 gram [1^1/3#] lobster I got 320 grams [11 oz] of meat