May 6, 2018 Lunch – Florentine Mushroom Omelet, Dinner – Lobster Thermidor Aromatique, Salad and Baked Potato

May 6, 2018 Lunch – Florentine Mushroom Omelet,  Dinner – Lobster Thermidor Aromatique, Salad and Baked Potato

I ate a whole wheat everything bagel smeared with cream cheese and garnished with Lax and red onion slices and capers with a cup of tea.

I picked Suzette up at the airport at 12:30 and when we returned home I made a spinach, mushroom and Jarlsberg cheese omelet.

We drank King Family Pinot Gris with the Omelet and while we watched re-runs of Downton Abbey after lunch.  Then we took a nap.

I awoke at 4:00 and went to Talin to pick up the two lobsters I had ordered yesterday.  Spoiler alert, the price of fresh lobsters has increased to $19.88/lb., so my two 2 ½+ lb. lobsters cost $109.00.  I also bought shallots, baby bok Choy, Danish herring, beech mushrooms, and a bottle of Marques de Riscal Sauvignon Blanc from Rueda.

I went home and rested some more.  I awoke again at 6:00 and started looking at recipes.  I decided to make a combination of Lobster Thermidor and Lobster Aromatique from Mastering the Art of French Cooking and the Paris Cookbook.  Here are the recipes:

I followed the Aromatique recipe for poaching the lobsters I put fresh thyme, several garlic chives, some parsley, a bay leaf, some coriander seeds, a chopped carrot, onion and celery stalk in a pot with 1 quart of water, 1 quart of white wine, ¼ cup white wine vinegar I boiled that mixture for 15 minutes and then put in the two lobsters and covered the pot and simmered the pot for 20 minutes which poached the lobsters.  I then removed the lobsters and cooked down the liquid to about 2 cups.  In a separate covered enamel sauce pan I sautéed ½ lb. of white mushrooms in 2 T. of  butter, 2 T. of water, a pinch of salt, and 2 T. of lemon juice for ten minutes. This technique is used to prevent the mushrooms from turning brown. I then added the cooking liquid from the mushrooms to the lobster pot that was reducing.

Salad

Willy arrived a bit before 7:00 and he and Suzette went to the garden and harvested a basket of fresh lettuce and cleaned and spun it.

While I was chopping a tomato, an avocado, three radishes, ½ cucumber and three oz. red onion slices.  The salad was ready except for dressing it with our house perpetual Caesar dressing which Suzette added when she tossed the salad just before dinner.

Willy and Suzette then made a roux with 5 T. of butter and 5 T. of flour plus a bit of salt, white pepper, and I added a couple gratings of nutmeg while they were stirring it three minutes to cook the flour.  Then they strained the stock through a seive and Suzette stirred the sauce as Willy ladled clear lobster stock into the roux to create a cream sauce.

I made Child’s standard enrichment of two whisked egg yolks with ½ cup of whipping cream and added that to the sauce.

Then Suzette added the mushrooms and I pulled the two lobster tails and removed the meat and through the roux into the stock pot with the PPI mirepoix.  Willy wanted some claw meat so I then
cracked one of the large claws and removed the claw meat and chopped the meat of both tails and the claw into ½ to 1 inch cubes and added the meat to the sauce to heat it.

Suzette cut open a potato and buttered it and added chopped chives for each pasta bowl and ladled sauce onto the plate beside the potato.

I opened and poured 2014 St. Celine Chablis (Trader Joe’s $12.99) and poured glasses of it and we carried our our glasses and bowls to the gazebo table in the garden where Willy and Suzette had set the table and placed glass salad bowls and the large salad bowl of salad and lit the kerosene lamp and turned on the lights.

We served ourselves bowls of salads ate a lovely dinner. I noted that although the lobsters were expensive they were as fresh as possible having been shipped fresh from Boston that Dayana that if we wanted to eat a Lobster Thermidor dinner with French Chablis it would cost a lot more than what we paid for these ingredients.  Willy then said, “Not even counting the three airfares.”

I then told the story of our family’s favorite restaurant in NY. When I was 7 or 8 we would spend a month in NY each summer so we could visit with Mother’s mother, who lived in Union City, N.J.  We all loved lobster and, as I recall, there was a restaurant named Mr. Lobster that was a converted cafeteria that served a lobster dinner of a boiled chicken lobster with a baked potato and a salad for $4.99 in the early 50’s.  We loved that restaurant and would go at least once a week.
Mother would say, “I am trying to see if I ever will be tired of lobster.”

I guess we never have..

Bon Appetit