Lobster's Don't Bite

 
 In Western cultures, at least, few modern home cooks ever get very close to food while it's still a living, breathing thing. To that, most of us would say, amen. But the lobster is the single common exception. We buy it live because of its propensity to decompose rapidly when it's dead. Few of us would force ourselves to endure that ordeal if the food itself were anything but sweet, moist, almost unmatched in its succulence.

First, to explain how to buy the best possible lobster. After that, of course, comes the fun part. We'll boil one simply in aromatic, salty water and present a dipping sauce with real character. We'll go on to make an incredibly quick fricassee of lobster. And then, to show how frugal (and clever) we can be, we'll use the trimmings to flavor butter and also prepare a beautiful lobster bisque.

The Freshest Lobster

The first thing you look for, of course, is a lobster that's alive, but that's not enough to ensure the best-tasting, firmest flesh.

• At the fish monger's, pick the lobster up. It should spring into fighting posture, curling its tail upward and flailing its claws outward (although they will hopefully be locked closed with rubber bands). This tells you the lobster still vigorous. A weak lobster has probably been wasting away in the tank for too many days, where its flesh would have begun to shrink as it withered from lack of use.

• There are several hints that the flesh is in firm good condition. The lobster should feel relatively heavy compared to others of the same size and its shell should feel hard, not squishy. Examine the belly; you should be able to see the flesh through the translucent shell, visual proof that it hasn't shrunk.

• If possible choose a lobster that has not lost any of its legs or a claw; invariably that means that some of its juices have leaked out.

• If you buy the lobster the day before using it, wrap it in damp brown paper or newspaper and place it in the cold vegetable bin of the refrigerator; you'll be amazed at how lively it still is 24 hours later. But don't expect this technique to be effective much longer than that.

Boiled Lobster

The easiest way to kill a lobster is to fill a large soup kettle with water, bring it to a rolling boil and quickly plunge the lobster into it head first. This kills the lobster instantly. The thrashing about that may continue is an after reaction of the nerves, similar to what happens when a headless chicken keeps running. (Do not put the lobster in the water tail first, which is cruel.) Sometimes there is a hissing sound that horrifies people who believe it is the lobster protesting; it is not. The sound is the air escaping from beneath the shell (lobsters, in fact, have no vocal cords).

The finest, purest way to boil a lobster is to go down to the sea and fill your kettle with sea water. It is salty to just the right degree but also pleasantly rich in vegetation (seaweed and the like), minerals and other subtle flavorings. If you use seawater, that's all you need. In our kitchen, we didn't have any, so we decided to enrich the water with salt (the lobster will come out wonderfully if that's all you add, actually) and also some vegetable ingredients of our own choosing, just to make it ever-so subtly more flavorful.

Then, rather than prepare the usual dipping sauce of melted butter, we chose citrus vinaigrette. This recipe is written as if it were for just one lobster, but you can do exactly the same thing with two as long as the kettle is big enough so that the water stays sufficiently hot even after the lobster is dropped into it.

Recipe

1 cup coarse salt
1 carrot coarsely chopped
1 onion cut into chunks
1 clove garlic, crushed
12 peppercorns
zest of 1 lemon, in wide strips
1 teaspoon vinegar
1 lobster, 1 1/4 pound
Saut้ed, julienned vegetables of your choosing (bell peppers, carrots, squash....) for garnish.

1. To a full kettle of water, add the salt and all the ingredients -- except the lobster and the garnish. Bring the water to a rolling boil. Plunge the lobster in, head first and cook for about seven minutes. (This will yield very tender, moist flesh --if you prefer it firmer, cook the lobster longer).
2. Remove the lobster from the water and place it on a towel to drain and cool somewhat so it can be handled.
3. Serve with a mixture of saut้ed vegetables on the side and the citrus dipping sauce (recipe below).

Yield: One serving.

For the dip:
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste.

1. Blend all the ingredients and place in a small serving bowl.

Yield: Enough dip for one whole lobster.

The other, more unsettling approach to killing the lobster -- often necessary if you plan to grill the beast or prepare a recipe that uses fresh, raw lobster meat (like our fricassee -- is to place it on its belly and locate the juncture of the cross that you'll see just below the head. With a chef's knife's blade pointing away from you, thrust the point into the juncture, severing the spinal cord and then split the head, almost in a single forward motion. Again, there may be some continuing movement but the technique renders the lobster instantly and utterly dead. All right. Now that that's out of the way, let's get on with the cooking.