Thursday, January 22, 2009

Lobster + Mac + Cheese

Before I start I'd like to point out that this dish almost didn't get made. Not from a practical standpoint (impossibility, lack of ingredients/skill) but for a more philosophical reason. Traditionally, in Italy at least, it would be unheard of to pair fish in pasta with cheese. The flavours of the cheese were thought to sour, and overpower the delicate fish. Indeed, you want the to speak for itself without burying it under loads of ingredients. The fish might have something interesting to say, after all, it has been in school all its life! HA!

This goes doubly for lobster.

So, with some internal debate, I decided that I'd go for it anyways and use body meat. You can get it from your local fishmonger, and its not that expensive anyway, plus it involved less labour in the preparation stages. I made this dish in a skillet and when it gets baked it looks pretty cool, melted cheese crisped by the hot iron, heck yes.

So here's what you need, for the pasta:

Half cup unsalted butter
Half cup flour
2 cups half and half cream
Salt/Pepper
Cayenne pepper
3 cups old cheddar (shredded)
2 cups gruyere (shredded)
1 lb elbow macaroni

...and for the lobster:
Third of a cup of panko breadcrumbs (see post about panko creation, real easy)
1 lb lobster body meat, chopped (cooked or uncooked, doesn't matter, but I bought mine freshly steamed at the fish place and it worked out fine)
Parmesano-Reggiano
A bit of butter, aww yeah

Here's what you do:
1)Preheat oven to 350F please. And thank you.
2)Boil your macaroni in heavily salted water (why salt your water? I will explain, but it has nothing to do with water boiling faster.) Boil till it's allmossst done but not quite.
3)So in your trusty skillet, melt the butter till its bubbling on medium heat. Now this is where a semi-deft touch is required. Add your flour a little bit at a time, whisking furiously until its all incorporated. IF you just dump it in, you're an idiot and you will have the worst tasting, chunky and purely bad cheese sauce ever. So whisk for a minute or so, then slowly add the cream in the same manner as the flour. Keep stirring until everything is more or less creamy. Once you are satisfied with your cream, turn the heat off and add your cheeses, cayenne and s+p and mix it all up until the cheese is melted.
4)Dump your mac into the cheese sauce you just made and mix it all up real good, then put it in the oven for 30 mintues.
5) While the mac is in the oven, melt a scoop of butter in a pan, once it melts, turn off the heat, add the lobster, panko and grate some parm-reg over it and give it a good stir.
6)When 30 minutes is up, take the skillet out of the oven, turn the oven to broil (full heat), and spread your lobster mix out all over the top. Put it back in for 8 minutes. When you take it out, you'll have a deliciously cheesey, but more importantly, crunchy top.

Some notes on lobster + mac + cheese. First of all, it was great, but I think that the mac and cheese bit would be just as good without the lobster, and I'm going ot try it again with some nice chorizo or polish sausage, yeeaaah. Going to back to what I said above, I believe that lobster with melted butter is truly a great dish and doesn't need to be enhanced with cheeses or mac. So if you want, you can use this recipe sans lobster and you're golden. Second, play around with the cheese selections, maybe you want all cheddar, or marscarpone, or cheesewhiz! It don't matter, do what tastes good.

So there you have it. Oh yeah, a nice Belgian Pilsner goes smashingly with the l+m+c.

Enjoy!

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