Friday, November 22, 2002

So I’ve killed my second lobster.  I’m not sure when along the way it died, but at six o’clock in the evening it was passed, groping and gasping, into my hands, and by nine o’clock half of it was on my dinner plate napped in cream sauce, so I think we can safely pin the murder on me. It stopped groping almost immediately after the guy in the Chinatown shop tied it up in a plastic bag and handed it to me in exchange for six dollars.  I’d been afraid it would thrash around embarrassingly on the train, but it just sat there like a bag of groceries.  I was also carrying a bag full of spinach and another full of bread and wine, and a third with some clothes from Century 21.  In addition to my purse, weighed down with MtAoFC, because I hadn’t managed to make a shopping list while I was at home.  A funny thing happened, too, on the way home from Chinatown -- not so much funny ha ha as funny fuckingtypical.  I was walking down the steps of at the subway station when my left boot, which I have insisted on continuing to wear despite the fact that the instep has cracked entirely apart and the leather is beginning to tear, decided to give up the ghost entirely.  I nearly fell ass over tea kettle, and when I recovered myself, I found that the front part of my shoe had separated itself more or less entirely from the back part, the two pieces held together by something less than an inch of worn leather.  My toes were in full, shameful view.  “This is pretty funny,” I thought, as I limped down the stairs and onto the subway. But this is all beside the point.  The point is that when I got home I peered down into the lobster bag.  He was bagged within a bag, and the inner bag was sucked tight around him and sort of clouded up.  He was suffocating!  I tore open the bag to let in some air… before putting him in the freezer.  I can’t imagine what I’m thinking – suffocating is worse than freezing to death is better than being steamed alive?  This is a philosophical road I am not prepared to go down at the moment.  While the lobster was slowly freezing to death, I washed the spinach.  God, I hate to wash spinach.  Three bags of the stuff.  The original plan had been to make Canapes aux Epinards, Spinach and Cheese Canapes, but this evening I was distracted for reasons that will become clear in coming weeks, and decided to retrench.  I was going to do plain old Epinards Etuves au Beurre, buttered spinach.  After rinsing the spinach, I boiled it in salted water for five minutes, then drained it, squeezing the water out as soon as it was not unbearably hot.  I chopped it and cooked it in a pot with 2 tablespoons of butter, then dropped in four more tablespoons of butter, turned down the heat to low, covered, and let it cook for ten minutes.  Somewhere in here I had also sliced an onion, a carrot and a stalk of celery, and put them in a pot with some vermouth, some water, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, peppercorns, and tarragon.  I let that simmer for a few minutes, then took the lobster out of the freezer – looking more or less dead but still very photogenic – and put it in the pot.  I let him steam for 15 minutes or so.  He came out even more photogenic still.  I cut him in half, and the insides weren’t quite so photogenic, but they were impressive.  No eggs, though, again.  Someone keeps selling me boy lobsters.  I’m getting kind of sick of it.  The juices in the pot had cooked down to pretty much nothing.  I think the reason is that the recipe is for three lobsters.  Since I was only doing one, I thirded the ingredients, but that was a mistake.  I had to pour in some more wine and water to deglaze the pan.  Then I let that boil down a few minutes then added a paste of flour and softened butter.  That thickened everything right up – I thinned it out with some Horizon organic cream.  Mmmmmm….  Then I tossed in some parsley and that was that. The spinach was that unattractive color of spinach that’s been cooked within an inch of its life.  I stirred a couple more tablespoons butter, and some salt and pepper.  I spooned the cream sauce over each half of the lobster.  And that was that.  Really not a very difficult weekday dinner, considering.  I will say that so far lobster seems maybe not worth the economic and karmic price.  (Though at six dollars, I guess I shouldn’t be complaining too much.)  This lobster tasted like cream sauce.  I also suspect that I overcooked him a little.  I will try really hard not to do that next time.  The spinach was spinach with a stick of butter of butter in it, and so naturally was wonderful.  God, I love spinach.  And I love that I love spinach – I’ve come so far in life.  I feel like I’m growing. Tomorrow, I’m not going to cook.  It’s Friday, for fuck’s sake, and besides, I have a Francophile Thanksgiving to plan.  Goose stuffed with prunes and foie gras, anyone?  7:56:49 AM    comment []