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Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009

Lobster love: Now is the time to enjoy the popular crustacean

Lobster is a year-round treat, but if you ask me, the high season is right now, not the dog days of summer, as so many people on vacation assume.

The reason? Longer nights and often cooler weather make us hungry for richer, fuller flavors like lobster, whether it’s served plain with drawn butter, cold with mayonnaise in a hot dog roll or gussied up into those French classics, lobsters thermidor and Americaine.

Lobster prices have fallen sharply, along with the economy. The wholesale or boat price of lobsters has plummeted from a peak price of about $10 a pound in the winter of 2006 to $2.25 a pound this summer, Fortune magazine reported.

Another reason lobster is so right now is that the creature is done with molting, the process in which the crustacean sheds its old shell and grows a newer, larger one. While these new shells are relatively easy for eager eaters to remove, the flesh can seem watery and lack the firm texture and complex flavor so many people love.

And love does play a factor in why the female lobster loses its shell. Just ask Trevor Corson, aka “The Lobster Sex Guy.”

“In lobster mating, the male always keeps his clothes on, while the female always gets completely undressed,” Corson said. “What the female is actually doing is shedding her old shell when she mates.

The male, by contrast, must keep his shell on during mating.”

HOW TO BUY A LOBSTER

Lobster is available frozen and canned, but the best lobster is a live lobster.

Buy the liveliest lobster you can find in the tank. Feistiness equals freshness.

Refrigerate the lobster in whatever bag you used to bring it home. Plan to cook it that day; lobsters don’t hold well overnight. Take care in handling a lobster between the bag and the pot. You want to make sure the rubber bands or wooden pegs used to keep the large claws closed remain in place so you don’t get nipped.

HOW TO BOIL A LOBSTER

These instructions for cooking lobster come from the Maine Lobster Council.

Choose a pot large enough to hold all the lobsters comfortably; do not crowd them. A 4- to 5-gallon pot can handle 6 to 8 pounds of lobster. Fill with water, allowing 3 quarts of water per 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of lobster. Add a quarter-cup of sea salt for each gallon of water. Bring the water to a rolling boil. Add the live lobsters one at a time, and start timing immediately (boil them about seven to eight minutes per pound). Do not cover. Stir the lobsters halfway through cooking.

Let the lobsters rest for five minutes or so after cooking to allow the meat to absorb some of the moisture in the shell.

HOW TO EAT A LOBSTER

Here are steps for getting to the meat of the lobster, from the Maine Lobster Council:

1. Twist off the claws.

2. Crack each claw and knuckle with a lobster or nutcracker. Remove the meat.

3. Separate the tail from the body and break off the tail flippers. Extract the meat from each flipper.

4. Insert a fork and push the tail meat out in one piece. Remove and discard the black vein that runs the entire length of the tail meat.

5. Separate the shell of the body from the underside by pulling them apart; discard the green substance called the tomalley.

6. Open the underside of the body by cracking it apart in the middle, with the small walking legs on either side.

Extract the meat from the leg joints and the legs themselves by biting down on the leg and squeezing the meat out with your teeth.