Monday, February 9, 2009

Lobstah!

Picking up on the financial ruin you all are suffering if you didn't eat crepes on Candlemas Day, here's a story that rose to the surface a few months ago. The recession has evidently hit the luxury food market. Here's some "lobster history."
The Brave Astronauts invited our good friend NJM to dinner on Christmas Eve. She was very kind to bring lobster rolls, a traditional meal on Christmas Eve in her family. My family usually had hamburgers and my father's homemade potato chips. Her recipe for lobster rolls appears below.

In keeping with the ever-worsening economy, to make things worse, the sales of champagne are also "losing their fizz." I guess it's good to know that if we are all forced back to church to pray for our financial well-being, there's always good, nutritious "Jesus, bread of life" to eat.

NJM's Lobster Rolls
  • dinner rolls
  • approx. 1 lb cooked lobster meat (you can use claw or tail meat - ask her to tell you the story about scoring the meat for the Christmas Eve batch in a state the prefers crab to lobster)
  • approx. 1/3 cup mayonnaise
Hollow out dinner rolls. Mix lobster meat and mayo together so the meat is bound together. Place meat inside the hollowed out rolls. Broil in the over for approximately 5 minutes, just enough to brown the tops and heat the meat through. This amount of meat should yield about 10-12 rolls.

If you ever find yourself on the east end of Long Island, go here and try the lobster rolls. They're fantastic. While the rolls prepared by NJM were absolutely swoonworthy, give me some drawn butter and a whole steamed lobster and you won't hear from me until I'm ready for seconds.

5 comments:

Anna van Schurman said...

No offense but that lobster roll sounds all wrong--first of all that is way too little lobster for that number of rolls. And really, dinner rolls? I will go to the kitchen now and pray for your culinary soul.

Lana Gramlich said...

I used to be big on lobster, but somewhere along the way I turned into a total crab-aholic. These sound good, though. I'll have to give them a try.

Anonymous said...

Anna, you're not wrong. The thing is these rolls are from my grandmother's Christmas Eve buffet (along with cheese pudding and scalloped oysters), hence the size. Plus the hollowing out is more of a box on top of the roll, so no more than a quarter cup of lobster will fit.

My family is so tied to this Christmas Eve dinner that when we lived in Nashville whichever kid was coming home from college last was tasked with stopping at JG Hook for the lobster meat before going to Logan.

Mary Witzl said...

I could weep, just reading this. Fish here is ridiculously expensive, which is crazy, but there it is. They say the Mediterranean in our area is all fished out. Buying things like lobster here would mean mortgaging the house we no longer have... I'll have to enjoy these vicariously!

Brave Astronaut said...

Anna - I assume you saw NJM's response. As noted, I personally prefer the whole lobster, but these were pretty darn good.

Lana - Then you must come visit so we can get you the official food of Maryland.

NJM - Go get 'em, killer.

Mary - DO I have to send you some lobster like I did for Kim and the peanut butter M&Ms?