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
   

The Terrace at La Cúpula

This is a short (40 secs) shot of the terrace at the local pizzería on Thursday night. The quality is iffy but you might sort of get an idea of what it's like.

Yes, it's in Spain but you hear people speaking English (some musician who was visiting here from South Carolina) and very nice music being performed by the band at the back end of the terrace (in the Latin Bossa Jazz style).

After I get some more practice the quality (might) improve. This was my first try with shooting a video in "night" mode and I obviously have some serious problems holding the little phone-camera steady.

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In any case, it's a very nice little space and if you're ever around here one Thursday night you might like to drop by.

Chicken Madeira & "Lobster" Avocado Salad

Suddenly I had to make lunch yesterday. No planning went into this; I just popped out to the store and hoped for the best - - and a little bit of inspiration.

A fish & fruit salad (fake lobster tails and avocados with an avocado vinaigrette


and a Chicken in Madeira Tomato Sauce

Avocado Lobster Salad

Ingredients

serves 2

• mixed greens
• some rucula [rocket]
• 2 lobster tails
• 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
   
4. surround, symmetrically, with avocado slices
5. blend oil, vinegar, avocado bits and salt
1. drizzle over the salad

Notes

1. Using enough salt is really important in the vinaigrette. People tend to under-salt this kind of dressing
   
2. A stick blender is ideal for making the vinaigrette

Chicken in Madeira Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

serves 3

• 3 T olive oil
  
• 3 chicken thighs
• 3 T Madeira wine (or port or some type of fortified wine; I used a light sweet port)
  
• 1 C tomato sauce (homemade - sofrito)
• 1 C tomato pureé
  
• 1 onion
• salt
  
• 2 cloves garlic
• red pepper
• cumin (a pinch)
  
• ¼ C water (fresh from the tap)
• 1 red pepper (deseeded)
  
• lemon juice (from a half lemon - fresh)
  
• thyme - fresh from your back porch
  

Procedure

1. Oil into a pan
2. fry the thighs, skin side, until very browned (5, 6, 7 minutes or so)
3. fry the other side until really brown (another 6 minutes)
4. remove the pieces from the pan
5. pour off excess fats & oils
6. deglaze the pan with the port (Madeira)
7. add the tomato sauce
• bring up to a boil/good simmer
8. add enough water so that it's soupy
9. return chicken to the pan - skin side up
   
• get back up to a good simmer
10. Add lemon juice and the red pepper
    
11. Cover with a loose lid and reduce to a slow simmer - for 10 minutes to three quarters of an hour
12. Remove chicken to the serving plate
• Cover loosely with aluminium foil
13. Remove the red pepper
    
14. Reduce tomato sauce so that it's saucy, not soupy
15. Pour over/around chicken pieces
16. Sprinkle a little (very little) bit of thyme leaves over the presentation
    

Notes

1. Browning the chicken, very well, in just a bit of oil will result in crusty brown bits let in the pan bottom; which is what you want; so that you can get it, and its accompanying flavour, into the sauce by deglazing the pan with the port
2. Degalzing is: pouring a liquid into the hot pan and scraping up the flavourful brown stuff that was left from the previous cooking step.
3. Adding water to the tomato sauce before simmering the chicken is to make sure that there's enough liquid to keep the sauce from burning on the bottom of the pan. You could use a really good chicken stock instead of water - - that would be nice
   
4. Chicken Madeira often has mushrooms in it - mine didn't today
   

Robot

I've been looking at getting a new toy for the kitchen. Either a

KitchenAid


or a Kenwood (known as DeLonghi in the US)


They're called a "kitchen robot" here; possibly because one of the most well known European makers is called "Robot Coupe" (it's French).

A capricious purchase, sure, but will be fun (if I can only find space for it).

Anyone have any preferences or recommendations?

Herbs

Okay, so you take the plant, which is growing quite nicely in the garden now that summer's here, trim the outermost leaves, dry them carefully (on newspaper, turning/stirring, every few hours) and remove any contaminants. You will be consuming this stuff later and you want the resultant product to be nice and clean.



I hope you clicked on the picture to enlarge it and realized that we are talking about thyme - - not that other "herb" you might have been thinking of.

I bought a thyme plant for the back porch a while back and you have to keep trimming them to keep them from getting scraggly. The result is that you quickly have about a 12 years supply of fresh, home dried, thyme on your hands. Boy oh boy is it ever more fragrant than the 2 year old bottle of (very nice, top quality) thyme I last bought in Paris.

A Kitchen

I have a thing for kitchens. We're looking into redoing the kitchen at home and with a little luck it might end up looking like this.




Or maybe not.

But I _do_ like this one. 1) Big 2) Tidy 3) Lots of fun equipment. On the cooking line, known as the "piano" in French, it's got (from the back) a grill, 6 huge gas burners (I'd prefer ½ of mine to be convection though [it's more energy efficient]), a granite slab and double fryers. I'm not actually sure whether that granite slab is a cooking surface or a work surface.

This pic is of the restaurant kitchen in terminal 4 at Barajas airport in Madrid, El Madroño.

In kitchen supply stores and/or hardware stores I can blow a couple of year's budget in one shot if I'm not careful.

Guideline Daily Amounts

For a moderately active person the Guideline Daily Amount (GDA) of calories is 2000 for women, 2500 for men.

This was lunch yesterday. Yes, sometimes I too eat fast food. 1 McRoyal Deluxe, large fries, a beer (McD serves beer here; it's not considered evil).

The icons are: calories, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, salt.

With this one "meal" I got ½ of my daily calories, 40% of protein, 75% of fats, 30% of carbs, & 75% of salt for the day (excluding the ketchup and the beer). That, and a souvenir old style coca cola glass.

Poulet Papillote: Chicken in a Pocket

Poulet Papillote is French. I don't know why I think of this dish in French - but I do. Probably inspired by this blog entry by another Cordon Bleu student - Ms. Glaze. I wish I could find Chicken from Bresse (in France) here in Spain. There was a famous chicken shop across the street from our Paris apartment that sold them - - I miss it.

I baked a chicken the other day. Wanting a low-fat variant I figured I would cook it in foil so that the fat would escape but the closed package would keep the meat moist.

Updated: I forgot to mention the celery

Ingredients

R-L: Chicken, salt (the jar at the back), aluminium [aluminum] foil, leeks, carrot, celery, fresh onion, lemon, the pink things are Food Loops, olive oil. Missing: lemon grass, pepper

Before wrapping

Wash it. Salt and Pepper inside. Stuff with the lemon and chopped ingredients, tie with the pink wrappy things, oil it up, some onion goes outside

Cooked

Cooked, wrapped in doubled up foil, for 2 hours at 175C [350F]. This was a 2 kg bird [5#]

Ingredients

• 2 kg chicken
• salt
• pepper
• ½ lemon (had been previously squeezed for some other recipe)
  
• 2 leeks
• 2 celery sticks
  
• 1 carrot
  
• 2 fresh onions
• 3 sticks lemon grass (the secret ingredient)
• olive oil (virgin)
  

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 175C [350F]
   
2. chop veggies
3. wash the chicken (reportedly creates a crispier skin)
4. trim excess fat (if any)
   
5. salt & pepper inside the bird
6. put ½ lemon in the cavity
7. put in the chopped vegetables
8. wrap the legs up
9. oil the bird
10. onions outside too
11. wrap in doubled up foil
• seal well
12. into the oven for 2 hours
13. open up the package
14. broil for 7 minutes (to brown an otherwise white chicken)
15. Leave to stand for 10 minutes out of the oven (to cool to handling temperature)
16. Lift out, leaving the fat behind
    

- Done -

Notes

1. The lemon grass changes, subtly, the taste of the whole thing. It's quite useful to have around
2. The vegetable selection was just what I had in the bottom of the cooler. I would have put in zucchini too if I'd had a nice one.
3. Two hours was lots of time. Could have been 90 minutes - - or three hours. This method of cooking in foil is not time sensitive.
4. You can eat the stuffing from inside the bird. Delish.
   

Vino

Was out doing the shopping at the local bulk warehouse (not Sam's - we don't have Sam's here) and bought these 3 bottles of wine. Well, actually I bought 24 bottles of red wine 'cause we keep some in storage for later use. But it was these 3 wines that I bought 24 bottles of.

Pricing (l to r): 3,41 1,82 3,15 (that's CAD 4,87 2,60 4,49 & USD 4,58 2,44 4,23)

These are good wines. Not super duper deluxe wines but they are way above the level of a table wine.

Left: Gran Irache Crianza (harvest) 2001, Region: Navarra, Grapes: Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Graciano, and Mazuelo , Notes: fermented 20 days, oak barrels for 12 months, fruity

Bodega Irache was founded in in 1891 but they say that their grape vines date back to the 12th century. Suppliers, historically, to the royal house of Navarra (a former kingdom in Spain)

Center: Irache Tinto 2006, Region: Navarra, Grapes: Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon & Garnacha, Notes: Young, fermented 15 days, 2006 is reported to have been a very good year for the grapes

Right: Paternina Banda Azul (blue ribbon) Crianza 2003, Region: Rioja, Grapes: Tempranillo & Garnacha, Notes: aged 24 months in oak cask

These are day to day wines. For special occasions I spring for really good stuff that might go for as much as €12! On the Canadian vacation this August it's obvious that there is going to be some wine rationing; I've discovered that Banda Azul goes for about $20 (€ 14+) which is four and a half times the price here.

When buying Spanish red wines the words to watch for are: Rioja, Ribera, Duero and Tempranillo. The word Navarra would not be bad either although I don't know if any good Navarrian wines have made it to the export market yet.

Cafeteria Kitchen

CocinaElRancho, uploaded by willsong.

We've been casually looking around at possible restaurant properties. There's a lovely chunk of land with a little local café on it just down the block. Well, it's more of a tiny mom and pop run bar actually. It's been here in the village forever and is in the same state as it was 20+ years ago.

A dead simple place with a lovely huge garden. Has possibilities I think.

This pic's of their "commercial" kitchen. The wash-up sink and on the right is a little commercial machine to wash glasses and the thing with two knobs above it is the hot-water heater. Great windows that look out into the back garden of the place.

Nothing wrong with it. It meets the needs of a tiny bar kitchen. But it won't do if I actually want to serve real food.

Recent Recipes Listed in the Sidebar

Update: A little more research led to the "correct" solution. Now it lists the 5 most recent posts with the label "recipe". Next I'll add a tweak to put in a link to all posts labeled "recipe".
A blogger's work is never done.

I managed to add a section in the right sidebar that has recent recipes listed (the 5 most recent). it's actually a search for the word "recipe" rather than for posts with the explicit label "recipe" so it's not perfected yet but it's a start.

Tiramisu: The Recipe

Edited to fix up a couple of weird things that posting from Google Docs does (pic was too damn big, post title did not show, heading styles were not what I wanted - bah)

Well, finally, the recipe for Tiramisu. The base sponge is reciped in an earlier post. The result looks like this (which is the round version - versus the mini version or the rectangular version [no pic] that I also made {the recipe below is for the rectangular version}):

I more or less followed the recipe from Professional Baking; although reports are in that some recipes in it are slightly flaky (e.g. this version of the recipe completely omits ¡alcohol! which is essential to the soul of a Tiramisu).

Tiramisu

Ingredients

• Ladyfinger Sponge base (½ sheet pan) cut into 2
• Espresso Syrup
• 500 ml espresso [1 pt]
  
• 250 ml Dessert syrup [½ pt]
  
• 125 ml sugar [¼ lb]
  
• 125 ml water (mix these and bring to a boil; stir until sugar is dissolved; let cool) [4 oz]
• ¼ C rum
  
• 1,5 kg Mascarpone filling [3 lb] (procedure below)
  
• 2 yolks
• 180 gr sugar [6 oz]
• 120 gr water [4 oz]
• 60 gr Thick Sugar Syrup [2 oz]
• 3 parts sugar to 1 part water; boil until thick and almost syrupy; let cool (it thickens up some more)
  
• 500 gr Mascarpone [1 #] (room temp is good)
  
• 740 gr whipping cream [1 lb 8 oz]
• Cocoa (for dusting)
• Dark chocolate (bar) for making chocolate shavings

Procedure

1. Place one sponge on a (serving) platter
2. Add ¼ C rum to the espresso syrup
   
3. Soak with the Espresso Dessert Syrup (wet but not soggy)
4. Make the mascarpone filling
1. Whip egg yolks until light
   
2. Cook sugar, water and thick syrup to 120C [248F]
3. Slowly pour hot sugar into egg yolks while whipping up a storm; whip until cool (sort of makes a powdery mass - something like powdered sugar)
4. Mix the mascarpone until softened
5. Mix in the sugar/yolk stuff
6. Whip the cream
7. Fold into mascarpone mixture
5. Smear ½ the mascarpone filling onto the base
6. Place on the 2nd half of the sponge
7. Soak with some more espresso syrup (moderately)
8. Top with the other ½ of the mascarpone filling and level the top and smooth the sides
9. Cool for an hour or 6 in the fridge (or freeze)
   
10. Dust with cocoa evenly (maybe an hour or two, three, four before serving)
    
11. Shave, with a sharp knife and watching out for your fingers, chocolate from the bar (it should be between fridge cold nor room temp for decent results)
12. Sprinkle shavings over the cake

- Done -

Notes

1. I know that step 4.2 has redundant sugar, water and syrup (which is also just sugar and water) being cooked together but this is a "what I actually did" posting and what I actually did was prepare the simple syrup first, then a make a heavy syrup as a substitute for the "glucose or corn syrup" that the recipe called for (I will avoid corn syrup and don't have glucose in house). Next time I'll read ahead and just cook up some sugar and water straight.
   
2. Hot sugar mixtures burn nastily. Be careful.
3. These cakes freeze beautifully (without the cocoa and chocolate toppings)

With any luck I'm posting this from Google Docs - - who knows what it's going to end up looking like.

Easy Tiramisu

By coincidence the Amateur Gourmet, a food blogger in New York with a level of success that is several orders of magnitude greater than Will's Eats and whose blog I read on a regular basis, wrote an entry about Tiramisu this week -- - The Amateur Gourmet: Easy Tiramisu.

This guy is good. Studied for law school, then quit that and went into theater but now has a book deal out of his blogging and more or less makes a living at it.

A dead easy recipe by the way.

Ladyfinger Sponge

In making the Tiramisu the first step in doing it completely homemade is making the sponge base for the layers. I went over it briefly before but now... with pictures!

Ingredients: Yolks, sugar, whites, lemon, more sugar, flour


In industrial amounts you start with about 14 yolks but in this case I only used 4 (should have used about 7 or maybe 9 would have been good. I ended up short of batter).


Beat merrily, with sugar, over hot water until it reaches 43C [110F]. Apparently it it's fluffier if warm. Just to slightly above body temp; we're not making scrambled eggs here; we're making sabayon. Add some lemon juice here.



Dump into a bowl; continue beating until cool.


Sift the flour over the sabayon at this point and let it sit. Next time I'm going to try mixing them together after a little while so that it's more of a batter .

Egg whites.


Adding sugar, 1/3 of it at a time, once it's developing some body. Add another drop or two of lemon juice. Acidity helps hold volume too.

Until nice and peaky.

Fold into the sabayon batter gently but thoroughly.

Put into a piping bag and ... pipe into nice diagonal rows on the pan.


It wasn't even that evenly piped.


I didn't have enough batter for the whole (gigantic) pan so I had to smooth it to cover the empty quarter of the pan.

Bake at 190C [375F] for 10 minutes or so


Came out okay but too thin.


All in all not a success nor a blatant failure.

Ingredients

• 180 g egg yolks [6 oz, about 9 large]
  
• 90 g sugar [3 oz, big 1/3 C]
  
• 270 g egg whites [9 oz, about 9 whites]
  
• 150 g sugar[5 oz, small 2/3 C]
  
• 1 ml lemon juice [¼ t]
  
• 300 g pastry flour [10 oz, 2½ C]
  

Procedure (official)

1. Beat yolks and sugar (ingreds 1&2) over hot water & beat until it's 43C [110F] (that is, make a sabayon)
   
2. Whip whites, sugar & lemon juice (3&4&5) until firm, moist, peaks (lemoned meringue)
   
3. Fold these 2 mixes alternately into the flour (sabayon and meringue with flour)
   
4. Pipe into fingers or a sheet-pan