A Lobster Tale
When my nana was still alive, she'd visit us in California from Boston, always deplaning with an ice-packed box full of live lobsters. Despite her diminutive stature, when we were ready to prepare them for dinner, she'd remove them from the box, grab our sizable butcher knife, and unceremoniously lob their heads off while us kids squealed in disbelief.
I recently decided to surprise my Boston-born mother by bringing a couple of these prized crustaceans back from the fish market. (She won't often splurge for them out here in California as the price tag seems outrageous to an East Coaster.) The surprise was on me, however, when she couldn't bring herself to, well, you know...That means the dirty work fell to me. I grabbed that same gigantic knife, positioned the lobsters on a cutting board, and, one, two, three. They never knew what hit 'em. And, as far as I am concerned, that's the way to do it.
The above video chronicles the lobsters' brief journey from our sink to table. We stuffed the torsos with butter-saturated breadcrumbs and baked them. The claws ended up in a finger-lickin' tomato sauce.
--StellaCadente*
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Wayne Richards on August 13, 2010 at 04:28 PM
Never knew what hit 'em? Well, perhaps.
Ever had lobster sashimi? The whole raw lobster is served on a platter, the tail portion chopped laterally to convenient size. This worked well for me the first time I ordered it, but just as I was biting into a peeled portion of tail, the claws moved. Then moved again. As did the antennae.
I suddenly knew two things: (1) this lobster was very fresh; and (2) this lobster was far TOO fresh!
My first time was my last time.
Patrick Carroll on August 13, 2010 at 07:17 PM
About ten years ago I was at a sushi place in Kyoto with the wife. She ordered something, and watched in shock as the chef scooped some random fish out of the tank behind him, beheaded it, gutted it, did various other cleaning bits to it, and then served it to her, one fillet wrapped around a sharp bit of bamboo, all in about 10 seconds.
She just looked at it, gobsmacked, asking out loud "When did it die?"
She found herself unable to eat that fish.
Charlie on August 13, 2010 at 07:21 PM
Oh! The Horror! You're wasting all the good meat and fat in the head!
And you miss hearing them scream when you toss them in the boiling water too!
Charlie (likes his lobsters steamed with lemon and butter ;)
JFB on August 13, 2010 at 08:14 PM
The lobster was killed, then murdered in the cooking.
memomachine on August 13, 2010 at 10:01 PM
Hmmmm.
I think everyone has a story of someone expected to prepare lobster but unable to do the dirty deed.
Maureen on August 14, 2010 at 04:45 AM
It's a giant bug and it's in your house. Kill it! Kill it quick!
AndrewInSanDiego on August 14, 2010 at 09:28 AM
Heh. "Lobster is merely a delivery mechanism for melted butter". Don't remember who said it, but have never forgotten it.
MrJest on August 15, 2010 at 05:01 PM
My paternal grandfather inherited some money way back when, and "invested" in a lobster boat. Turned out he had a better head for adventure than business, and after almost a decade of barely making ends meet he gave up and sold the boat - but not after making an impression on my young father, who both had to work on the boat and eat lobster day in and day out for years... because they were so cash-poor that food was a couple scrawny "leftovers" when the days catch was sold. A time of high celebration was when my grandmother scraped together enough pennies to buy a ham.
The result was, after the business was sold and grandfather went on to more mundane office work, my young father swore he would never again eat lobster. He eventually married a woman who loved lobster, and they would go out to steak-and-seafood places... and he had steak. He died two years ago, and to the best of anyone's knowledge he never did let lobster meat pass his lips between that day and when he was 15 or so.
To my dad, the taste of lobster was the taste of poverty, humiliation, and failure.
StellaCadente* on August 23, 2010 at 02:19 PM
Wow @MrJest. Thanks for sharing that moving story. I suppose, like everything in life, it all depends on your perspective. @Maureen: You are right. Cockroaches of the sea...@Patrick, I was surprised at my ow indifference in doing the deed. But I think a year of culinary school desensitized me to death in the kitchen. There are a lot of dead animal parts in the kitchen. Most people are so far removed from the death part that they are able to eat animal flesh without thinking about it. But there's definitely murder involved. Or whatever you want to call it.