My First Spiny Lobster!
Oct 5th, 2008 | By Hank | Category: Fish, Italian | Comments | 11 Comments |
This, my friends, is my first-ever spiny lobster. It’s nice to start out with a giant, huh? This monster tipped the scales at close to eight pounds. Eight pounds?! The largest New England lobster I’d ever eaten was a five-pounder I’d received as a birthday present from my mum and my late stepfather Frank at a Portuguese restaurant in Newark, New Jersey.
This behemoth was also a gift, from my friend Laura, who is a diver. Yep, she grabbed this beast with her bare hands and wrassled it to the surface. I am definitely impressed, although I’d be more impressed if she’d grappled with a Maine lobster of that size. Remember, those lobsters have claws, spinies don’t. Her price? I had to dispatch and pull the tails off the other lobsters she caught; seems fair to me.
Spiny lobsters, I must say, are considerably different from their Maine cousins. Apparently they are indeed only very distant cousins, which you’d never guess by looking at them. You can guess it by eating them, however. Spiny lobsters are not as tender as New England lobsters (although the mammoth we ate could be why), and the texture is coarser than the lobsters I am used to.
One good thing: Spinies have way more meat in their bodies than New England lobsters — this one had 2 pounds, 4 ounces in him, and the meat at the base of the antennae (which you can see cut off in the picture) is a lot like knuckle meat in a Maine lobster.
Laura has been dying to know what I did with this lobster. Well, I pulled its tail off before I boiled the body and froze it. Just the tail weighed 2 1/2 pounds! I’ll deal with the tail at some later date. That left me with a little more than two pounds of body and leg meat, plus the shells.
Of course I had to make lobster stock from the shells. Can’t not do that, especially because I can’t be sure when I’ll get another spiny. This body, plus the bodies of two of Laura’s lobsters, was enough to make a full gallon of lobster stock. Woot!
Armed with fresh lobster stock, I made a Sardinian lobster risotto. What makes it Sardinian? Saffron, mostly. It came out fabulous with a double shot of lobster goodness from the stock, plus little bits of lobster topped off with big chunks added at the end. The chives made a nice topping.
We still had lots of meat from the body remaining, so I dipped into my Sardinian cookbook once again (if you have not read any of the Italian cookbooks by Giuliano Bugialli, such as Foods of Sicily & Sardinia and the Smaller Islands
What’s next? I am thinking of doing one of two classics: Lobster Newburg or Lobster Thermidor, although I could be convinced to make a classic lobster bisque. What say you? Which one shall it be?
Hank, I would agree that your lobster was tougher than the Mine variety because of it’s size.
Also, cold water seafood usually wins in flavour over warm water seafood.
Regardless, a wonderful gift from your darling friend, the lobster was dispatched to good use.
Nice work using every bit of the good beast. I don’t think you can go wrong no matter how you cooking lobster with cream, butter, cheese, and delicious alcohol. Happy eating!
Thermidor! Thermidor! Thermidor! It’s the Welsh rarebit of lobster!
I’d also go for a bisque, but I’d supplement with Dungeness crab (aplenty this time of year).
I need more fishermen and diverwomen friends.
That risotto looks damn good!
oooo! Make the bisque! I love it! (and homemade crackers?)
Beautiful risotto! Heck, with all that lobster you should be able to make *both* Thermidor and Newburg (btw, is there a typo is your extracted poundage? Surely an 8-pounder yields more that 2.25–or is three-quarters of a lobster other…um…stuff?). Please, Bisque too. I must confess to a weakness for Bisque…so decadent, so time-consuming…
No typo, Fin. The body meat was 2.25 pounds, the tail was another 2.5 pounds…
…still torn between Thermidor and bisque.
Thermador! Love it.. I’ve never had a spiny lobster, but any lobster is a winner to me.
Lobster risotto? That sounds amazing.
I’d vote for lobster bisque.
Man, that sounds awesome!
One of the things I miss most living in the southeast was diving for spiny lobster… and another, truly funky looking cousin, the slipper lobster (AKA Shovelnose). The shovelnose, by the way, remains my favorite of the three.
Smaller spinies aren’t as tough as the monsters, by the way.
I guess you can dive for bugs down in southern CA. It’s on my must do list… along with about a million other things.
Hank, you truly are an artist. I knew you would do that big guy proud and make it worth bringing him up from Cortes Bank.
Thanks for your help with all those lobster – I promise you’ll get at least one after every successful “bug hunt” I go on. However it may cost you an invite for some lobster bisque.
L