Apparently lobsters don’t mate for life, but as devout Friends fans, we certainly thought they did because Phoebe said so. We do love the saying “You’re my lobster,” so humor us please, and for the sake of Valentine's Day, we’re rolling with the ‘lobster for life’ theme with this simple dish.
To be honest, we had never cooked lobster before creating this recipe, but we thought it would be a fun experiment to tell our dear husbands that they are, indeed, our lobsters.
We’re always up for a cooking challenge and we’re definitely too squeamish to attempt to boil a whole, live one! We opted for just the tails which were readily available at the local store.
Beurre monté is just a fancy French word for butter whisked with hot water, so don’t let it scare you off! The beauty of this dish lies in its simplicity, no strong flavors that compete, just the perfect marriage of softly steamed lobster, butter, lemon and chives.
So go on, give it a whirl and show your lobster how much you love ‘em. xoxo Kirsty
Lobster with Lemon & Chive Beurre Monté
Serves 2
1 head of Butter or Boston Lettuce, washed
2 raw lobster tails in their shells (ours were 4oz or 115g each), rinsed
For the Lemon Chive Beurre Monté (butter sauce):
1 tablespoon of water
1/2 cup (115g) of butter, cut into small pieces
1-2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon of fresh chives, chopped, plus more for garnish
salt & pepper to taste
Start with one inch (2.5cm) of water in a pan that has a tight fitting lid. Put a steamer basket in the pan and bring the water to a boil. Once the water is boiling, reduce the heat to medium-high and steam the lobster for 4 minutes with the lid on. For a 3-6 oz tail, 4-6 minutes will do. Remove the lobster from the pan and put aside until cool enough to handle.
Whilst it’s cooling, prepare the ingredients for the beurre monté. Put 1 tablespoon of water in a saucepan. Squeeze the lemon and put aside, chop the chives, cut the butter into small pieces.
Now you’re going to get the meat out of the lobster. There are several ways to do this but here’s an easy way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vVH5eMnnEM
For the sauce, bring the tablespoon of water to a boil in the saucepan and turn the heat down to low-medium. When it’s stopped boiling, whisk the butter into the water piece by piece, adding more butter when the previous piece has been incorporated. You don’t want the mixture to boil once the butter is in the pan as it will separate. Keep doing this until all the butter is used up and the mixture is nicely emulsified. Take it off the heat, add the lemon juice (we like it tart and used 2 teaspoons), chives, salt and pepper.
Arrange the lettuce leaves on a plate, drape the lobster tail on top, or cut it into smaller pieces. Drizzle over the beurre monté and sit down with your love!
