lobster in the style of Cherbourg
ingredients - info
leaf spinach
vegetable stock
agaragar
lobsters
full cream
salt and pepper
calvados
sweet vermouth
First make the ring. Blanch 250 g of leaf spinach briefly in
boiling water. Rinse immediately in a sieve under running cold
water to fix the color. Bring two glasses of vegetable stock to
the boil. Add the squeezed spinach. Add 2 grams of agaragar
and leave to boil for another minute.
Pour this preparation with a spoon into large flat plates. Make
sure the rings are nicely rounded and do not spill on the
edges. Leave the plates to stand for a while until they start to
stiffen up. Now you can easily move them to a cool place or
the fridge to store them for later use.
The lobsters. Halve freshly cooked lobsters lengthwise. Catch
the moisture. Break off the claws and also the tail without
removing the shell. Remove the intestinal tract in the tail meat.
Remove the sachet in the head. Spoon the rest of the contents
with the collected fluid.
Take a meat hammer and break the shell of the claws. With a
nutcracker or a lobster cracker it goes too, but the risk of
damaging the meat in the claws is higher. Take the meat out
carefully and pour the released liquid with the rest of the gray
liquid. If there is calf in the lobster, you may add it.
The sauce. Press the lobster liquid through a fine sieve. You
will have about 25 cl of 'clean' liquid left over. Add twice as
much cream and bring this combination to the boil in a
saucepan. Season with pepper from the mill and sea salt. Pour
in equal amounts of calvados and sweet vermouth to taste and
let the alcohol evaporate. Reduce further to 2/3.
Pluck the tarragon leaves off the stem and chop them finely.
You need a handful of chopped tarragon. Make a liaison of two
egg yolks with a dash of cream. Take the pan off the heat, stir
in the liaison and then the tarragon.
tarragon
eggs
butter
unsprayed lemon
Breton seaweed
or edible flowers
purslane
parsley
Admit it, 'lobster in the style of Cherbourg' sounds
incredibly boring compared to the frivolous 'demoiselles
de Cherbourg à la crème'? In this case, ‘les demoiselles’,
the misses, are small lobsters. You can find them on the
menu of many restaurants in Normandy. What makes this
preparation special is undoubtedly the cream sauce.
Chances are that your guests will clean out their dinner
plate with a piece of bread.