Lobster Thermidor

Sure, it’s a bit of a treat but you’ve been good. Haven’t you? Remember, the secret to sucess is to shoot first and define your target later.

Step 1: Prepare the Lobster

For this recipe you need a cooked lobster. Whether you buy a live lobster, cook and cool it or defrost a pre-cooked one, you’ll need to prepare it. This recipe assumes you have a single lobster that weighs about 500g. If you have a larger lobster or multiple lobster, scale accordingly.

Begin by removing the claws circled above. They should twist easily off the main body. Crack them open with a rolling pin, knife or if you are really posh, a lobster mallet. The aim is to get the meat out of both section without smashing the shell to smithereens. The main claw has piece of cartilage in the middle of it. Chop the meat into pieces about the size of a pound coin and set aside. Put the shells in a small saucepan and set aside.

Next, cut the lobster in half. There are two lines on the photo above. You are going to cut down the black line first and then the green line. Take a large kitchen knife and put the point in where the yellow dot appears above. Cut down in one hard motion. Turn the lobster 180 degrees and cut down the green line, again in one hard motion.

You’ll be presented with two lobster halves. The first step is to remove the lobster tails. You might need to use a teaspoon to lift them out of the shells but they should come out in one piece. You’ll see lots of coral. It’s entirely a matter for you whether you want this in the finished dish. It will give you a great flavour but the finish isn’t quite the same. If you don’t want it in the fished dish, try to remove as much of it as you can. The remainder can be washed off the tail meat.

Trim off any meat that is yellow or grey. You should see a long black vein, remove that. (It’s the intestinal tract). Rinse off the coral if you wish. Chop into similar size pieces as the claw meat and set aside with it.

Next, remove the gills which look like feathers.

Finally, you’ll have the tomalley, the soft greenish substance. It’s the lobster’s live and pancreas. It’s edible but (a) not to everyone’s taste, (b) will ruin the finish of a Thermidor and (c) contains toxins, so eat separately with care or not at all.

Rinse the shells to remove any last trace of tomalley or roe being careful not to damage them.

Finally the legs. You can either remove them and use a rolling pin to squeeze out their meat or leave them and remove the meat post grilling.

Put the two half shells and lobster meat in the fridge while you make the stock and sauce.

Step 2: Lobster stock

Fill the small saucepan with lobster shells and 300ml of cold water and bring to the boil. Let it simmer for 20 mins and skim the top from time to time. After 20 minutes, strain out the shells. You can do this while you make the sauce or prepare it in advance.

Step 3: Sauce

For the sauce you will need:

20g of unsalted butter

1 Banana shallot finely sliced

2 tablespoons of herbs. You can use parsley, tarragon, thyme or a mix.

250ml lobster stock

50ml white wine, pernod or dry sherry

100ml crème fraîche or double cream

Half a lemon

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a medium heat and add the shallots. Sweat until they are softened. Add the herbs and cook for a minute. Add the wine, pernod or sherry and cook until it has reduced by half.

Next, the stock, again reducing by half

Then add the crème fraîche and reduce by half once more. I prefer to use crème fraîche because it’s far more difficult to make it split and ruin your sauce. Add a squeeze of lemon. Taste the sauce and see if needs more salt, pepper or lemon

While the sauce is reducing, pre-heat your grill to as hot as it gets.

Step 4: Grill

25g finely grated parmesan

Line a grill pan with foil and place the two reserved lobster shells on it. Put the reserved tail and claw meat back into the shells and pour over the sauce until it reaches the brim of the shells. Sprinkle over the parmesan and grill for 3 to 4 minutes until the sauce and cheese is golden. Keep an eye on it. It suddenly catches and can burn easily.

Serve

I like to eat Lobster Thermidor with dressed green leaves, chips and the remaining sauce in a cup to dip each plump, cheesy, saucy morsel of lobster that I devour from the shell. To drink, either fizz or a cold glass of Burgundy.