I knew that I was going to cook a dish with lobster and some fish. Possibly with some sort of corn. That’s about it. See, my neighborhood grocery store was having a massive sale on live lobsters and had an excellent selection of fresh fish. I noticed the Haddock right away, for a very good price as well. Then we went and saw Julie & Julia and I knew that some sort of a classic French preparation will be used for the fish. So, the one dish, morphed into two.
I partially “steamed” two lobsters following Thomas Keller’s method (put in a pot, pour boiling water on them, let them sit for 5 minutes and your done). This method makes the lobters very easy to peel but leaves the meat pretty much raw for further cooking. Also following Thomas Keller’s method, sort of (he actually filles an Immersion Circulator’s tub with melted butter!), I cooked the lobster tails and claws sous vide in a bag with butter at 59.5 C for about 20 minutes. The lobsters were served on top of diced sauteed mushrooms. Corn and lobsters are a perfect match. So, I made a sauce with corn juice and little else. I added a squeeze of lime juice, a tablespoon of cream and a little Lecithin to the sauce to give it a good emulsified texture.
For the classic French part of the dinner, I simply dusted the haddock with Wondra flour and pan fried it in butter. Served this on top of green beans tossed with almonds, shallots and some butter. The perfect sauce for this was straight from Julia Child’s seminal book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking“. A perfect Beurre Blanc. That wonderful creamy butter sauce that we hardly see anymore. To make it, a mixture of white wine vinegar, shallots and vermouth is reduced to a couple of tablespoons. Then cool butter is whisked in gradually. You can leave the shallots in there, but I strained it and threw the shallots into the green beans. The sauce was creamy (but had no cream), tart and oh so buttery. Absolute heaven. I did screw up when plating though. I should’ve put the sauces on the plate first before the mushrooms/beans as opposed to saucing all the way at the end. That would’ve made for a better presentation.