Monday, July 1st eve, if that’s a thing, we were facing record humidity in Montreal. Rujira, the wiser of us, planned ahead and got herself out of work. From the evidence, she spent the day within a four-foot circle caged by the fridge on one side, the fan directly in front of her, the sink, and the couch she did her best to never leave.
It was too hot to even think about the BBQ in the back. CRAZY. I know. (We’re already mid-way through our second summertime tank for a household of two [note to self, future potential blog post: “Summer Fun; Grill and Bare It!”].
Having already declared 2014 the year of homemade pastas and bread, as bold a statement as bold statements go that nicely camouflaged the lack of real New Year’s resolutions, we’d gotten lazy once the mercury inched closer to 30.
Despite the heat, we need to eat and I was thinking we could still successfully tackle some sort of pesto. I may need to change into shorts, but this was something easy that could be done after a full day at work and served with fresh linguini. The joy of fresh pasta on a summer day is that it cooks in just three minutes.
Our American head office refused to acknowledge a national holiday other than July 4, and so as work went from busy to busier, I went from wanting something easy, to daydreaming something more complicated. Job satisfaction. That’s all I wanted, even if it wasn’t the day job.
In my mind’s eye, I pictured Rujira’s surprise when I unveiled the grand plan. Below is how it played out.
But really, it wasn’t so hard. You just need to drop the lobster into the pan. Big issue is figuring out how to pick it up without touching it.
But it worked out!
You’ll need a food processor for this one. Nothing else really special.
Strip away the leafy bits from a handful of kale. Discard the stems. Boil some water with salt, throw in the kale. Give it two or three minutes. Strain it in cold water. Throw it back into the skillet, salt it, red-pepper flakes, pepper? (sure), and douse it in a spill of white wine, whatever you’ve got on hand, and some chicken stock. Forget about it for a while.
Now, the lobster. It should be live. The one we got was a shade under three pounds. (Whatever those are.) Put it in the sink. Open the bag. Forget about it.
Chop a few green onions. Crush a bit of garlic. Rip off a handful of basil. Whatever you want. At this point, we’re kind of stalling having to face the lobster again. She might have just moved.
Throw whatever you have into the food processor. (Don’t look at the lobster.)
Pulse the crap out of the kale, the green onions, the basil. Throw in a good quarter cup of olive oil. Add some grated parmesan is you’d like. (We did.)
Now. Now. Now. The lobster. If your sous-chef is not laughing at you hysterically, it’s a lot easier, or so I’d imagine. But I’ll break it down like this:
1.Drop the lobster into salter, boiling water. Add more salt than you’d normally do for pasta.
2.For our lobster, we waited 17 minutes. Because it felt right. We also used a lid. Just in case.
3.Take the lobster apart. Here is a useful link.
Also, ours…
4.Either make some pasta, or prepare to your liking. Cook it and reserve a little bit of the water.
5.Meanwhile, heat some oil. Throw in some of the pesto, add the pasta, toss, add some of the reserved water to help the pesto stick and then add the lobster meat.
6.Toss, and warm. Add more pesto if you think you need it.
7.Plate!
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