Lobster Roe Nightmare

As pictured in EMP

Yesterday, I literally spent 6 whole hours on my feet, slaving in front of a hot stove (at times it was a cool sink....but that doesn't make it any better). This is the first full length recipe from Eleven Madison Park's cookbook, and I was really excited to see if I had the culinary endurance to complete it successfully.

Thanks to Colin, we have had most of the more obscure ingredients (i.e. piment d'espelette) since last week. In the morning, I went to Whole Foods to stock up on the rest of the fresh ingredients. They didn't have live lobsters, so I bought 4 spiny lobster tails that were previously frozen. Not ideal, but it should do the job.

At home, I began to cook even though we still were waiting for the raw lobster roe to arrive from Maine via overnight FedEx - this is after a week long search high and low for a vendor in the US. Once the lobster roe arrived, I opened the package and was instantly grossed out.....it looked like slimy black slugs swimming in slug juice. Irrationally, I expected the roe to look like mini iridescent red jewels, and after a mini panic attack, I realized that the roe only turned red after cooking. The two recipes involving the roe, Lobster Roe Oil and Lobster Roe Powder, both involved cooking the roe. For the powder, I first cooked it briefly in a saucepan, and then zapped it in the microwave to remove all of the moisture. The roe congealed into a sheet after heating, and the sheet ballooned into a monstrous blog that threatened to explode in the microwave. Thankfully, it didn't, and the roe blog settled nicely into a crisp cake that I later ground up with a mortar and pestle. The roe oil wasn't as easy - I had to simmer it gently for just long enough for the sacs to turn red, but not too long as to make the insides firm. I had to redo it 3 times (luckily we ordered a lot of roe) before I was able to prevent the inside from cooking too long. The entire time, I was on the verge of puking just from handling the slimy stuff.

Not surprisingly, most of the cooking time went to the garnishes, and I realized that most of the steps for this recipe can be done days beforehand. The finishing touches - reheating the lobster in the Beurre Blanc sauce, glazing the fennel, plating - took at most 30 minutes, so if you wanted to make this recipe for a fancy dinner party, it would be easy to plan ahead.


Lobster Poached with Fennel, Orange, and Persimmons

 Poach lobster at 150 degrees F. Since these were fat tails, 

I cooked them for 20 minutes. 

 

Ingredients for Braised Fennel

Slice fennel, add braising fluid, and vacuum.
Cook in immersion circulator for about 1 hour.

 

Slice fennel "wings". Combine with olive oil, salt, and vacuum.

 Ingredients for Beurre Blanc

 12 sticks of butter for the sauce!!

Reduce wine. Combine with cream, OJ, and lots of butter for Beurre Blanc.
Keep at 155 degrees F. Add 'piment d'espelette (French chili pepper).

 Pickle persimmon slices in white balsamic vinegar.

 

 Sweat fennel and potato, puree and add fennel fronds.

 Raw lobster roe

 Cook roe until orange

Microwave roe in 30 second blasts.

 Lobster Roe Powder

 Simmer roe sacs, then remove roe and press out oil through a strainer.

Combine roe oil with canola oil.

 Finished!

Tasting notes: this turned out to be a delicious combination of flavors, but a little heavy on salt. I could have shaken off more Beurre Blanc off of the lobsters, and not added the extra salt when glazing the Braised Fennel. The sweet and tart flavors of the persimmons were wonderful with the orange tones of the Beurre Blanc, and they both brought out the sweetness of the fennel and lobster. Success!