Sound fancy? It’s not.
Insects of the sea, these. I wouldn’t eat them until age 19. Me, a girl from Newfoundland. And then I got over the whole antennae and eyes phobia and got on with the eating.
First, I treaded carefully (or, rather, biked). Then I went on a killing spree.
Now I have a rule that I only buy lobster when it’s less than $9.99 a pound. And that just about never happens. Until a month ago when it went on sale for a ridiculous $6.99 a pound. That’s about two-thirds of what it usually is (oh, Poisonnerie Atwater and your clientele that’s ever-wiling to pay too much for too little).
But it only went on sale at IGA. So on a Saturday morning — the day I’d promised to make lobster for lunch for a gluten-free, legume-free, high sugar fruit-free, dairy-free, soy-free friend — I went to my local IGA and asked for lobster. My local IGA doesn’t even have a seafood counter. I had to ring a bell by the display of unsustainable salmon and cod. A man in whites came out and said they were out of lobster.
My smile fell. Would there be any left at other IGAs, I asked?
Maybe. Best to call, he said. He thought they’d be getting a shipment at the Notre-Dame IGA in St-Henri.
Time was ticking away. I should be home preparing lunch by know, I thought. Instead, I raced back home to call the Notre-Dame IGA, not wanting to go out of my way for nothing.
“Do you have any lobster?” I asked the fish counter at the St-Henri store.
“We’re all out of the $6.99 ones, but we have larger ones coming in around 11am. They’re $12.99 a pound, though.”
What? But the flyer said $6.99. How could they charge more? I asked. The new ones were bigger, he said. Huh? What does that have to do with a price per pound?
I hung up, miffed, and called the Atwater IGA in Alexis-Nihon.
“Do you have lobster?”
“Yes.”
Hurray! “Will you have lobster in 30 minutes?”
“Yes, but thirty minutes, THIRTY MINUTES.” Okay, I’d be there in thirty minutes. Apparently there’s no such thing as putting a lobster aside on Mother’s Day when they’re going for $6.99 a pound.
I raced up there. And there was a whole tank full of $6.99 lobster. Thirty minutes, thirty minutes my arse…
I’m clearly not over it. But in any case, I got my two lobster and got back on the metro (I learned my biking lesson with lobster lesson years ago). As I was coming out of the metro with my cardboard box of rambunctious sea creatures, a man also exiting said, “Looks good. I had some the other day.”
I explained the whole $6.99 a pound impetus. And how hard it had been to find them.
“The guy at the St-Henri IGA, that must have been my friend,” he said. “Know why they were going to be $12.99 for the next ones?”
“The size, the guy said,” I answered.
“Actually, it’s because they set the prices way in advance and then the season in New Brunswick started so late and they weren’t getting any lobster in but they were stuck with the price.”
Apparently it was a mini disaster for fishermen getting a bad price on a season with little yield so far. They needed that $12.99. But IGA just did a bad job distributing the right amount of lobsters to the right stores. Apparently it doesn’t think people in Point St-Charles know a lobster deal when they see one.
Showed them, didn’t we? Now all those Poisonnerie Atwater patrons can go and pay the $12.99 a pound salaries of the deserving fishermen. I’ll bide my time. And savour lobster when I can get it cheaper. Which I did. Here’s how:
Lobster with Sage Butter and Horseradish Dijon
Ingredients:
2 Lobsters – small or medium-sized, and ask for male if you don’t want to deal with all the messy roe and tomalley inside the females, which are a delicacy.
2 litres of water (or 8 cups)
1/4 cup salt (doesn’t have to be exact, just throw in a lot)
1/4 cup melted butter or Earth Balance vegan margarine
4 leaves sage
2 Tbsp Horseradish Dijon from Kozlik’s Mustard company, or 2 tbsp Dijon and 1 tsp grated fresh or pickled horseradish, optional
1 lemon, cut in wedges
Buy your lobsters, bring them home and store them in the fridge while you add the salt to the 8 cups of water in your biggest pot. Lobsters are okay out of water for a little while, but definitely buy them the same day you want to make them, preferably right before, for the best results.
If you have a pot large enough to hold both lobsters, use it, and use all the water, but if you only have a smaller pot, you’ll probably have to cook the lobsters one at a time. You can cut the water and salt amounts in half in this case.
By the time your water comes to a boil and you’re ready to throw in a lobster, don’t worry if they’re not moving. They don’t like dry land, like Montrealers don’t like winter. Who can blame them?
Important throwing-lobster-in-water steps:
1. Do not remove the rubber bands around the claws.
2. Pick up the lobster by its behind.
3. Place it in the boiling water and cover the pot with a lid (add the second lobster if there’s room. You may need to push their pot-extruding claws into the water to get the lid on. Do so gently. You may also need to weigh down the lid. I have this irrational fear that the lobsters will rise out of the depths and seek vengeance on their murderer, so I seek comfort in the extra weight)
Lobster number 2 looks a little more excited to finally be warm.
4. Do not lower the heat.
5. Do not cry if they cry.
6. Set a timer for 10 minutes (for a small or medium-sized lobster) or 12 for the UFC Heavyweight Champion of lobsters (7 minutes per pound).
7. Find a good way to remove the lobster(s) from the pot (tongs or very large slotted spoons)
In the meantime…
…heat the butter or Earth Balance in a small pot. Add the sage leaves and simmer for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and pour into a dipping bowl or two.
How to shuck the lobster:
Wait for the lobster to cool to the touch (5 to 10 minutes). Break off the arms. There’s a tiny bit of meat in each but it’s up to you if it’s worth trying to get it out. You can buy little lobster shucking utensils in kits (like at the kitchen supply place inside Jean-Talon, or most other kitchen stores) but you can also pull the head off the body (there’s nothing good in the head to eat unless you’re someone who thinks it’s a delicacy, in which case you don’t want my shucking advice anyway) and use the flat of a heavy knife to press down hard on the underside of the crustacean and crack it open. Scissors sometimes work to cut through the more tender underbelly and tail. For the claws…well, that big knife might be okay, but probably you’ll want a nutcracker or something very heavy. Then little pokers (or fondue skewers) will help pull fine threads of meat out of thin cavities. The great thing is it takes a bunch of time to shuck the lobster, so you work for your meal instead of gobbling it up quickly and still feeling hungry and wishing you’d killed an extra lobster or two, barbarians that we are. Besides, all that butter needs time to soak into your body. It is my favourite kind of body butter.
Prepare dipping bowls of horseradish Dijon. I chopped some cucumber and lemon wedges because they cut the salt and the lemon tastes sweet and sour after the Dijon. The bottle in the top photo is a lemon olive oil. that was nice too. Good old fresh lemon was better, though. The black sauce is huacatay (Peruvian black mint). It wasn’t so great, but it’s in the picture. Leave it out of your picture unless you make your own Huacatay sauce with fresh, aromatic greens that we don’t grow in Canada. Can you get lobster in Peru?
I digress.
Dip the lobster meat and/or squeeze some lemon over top and enjoy.
For years, I boiled my lobsters with the rubber bands on. Then I read somewhere that it degrades the flavour. Try snipping them off some time. The lobster won’t attack you. I am now convinced they taste better without the rubber bands. But of course we often convince ourselves that better results come from more effort or more danger.