Dear Seafoodies

Friday marked the 12th annual gathering of the Lobster Lunch Club. This is a club (obviously) that meets once a year (because it’s annual) for lunch (who could have guessed that?) whose focal dish is lobster (you couldn’t make it up!).

The Club committee are a small and dedicated board of hardened and passionate lobstervores for whom I proudly serve as Gastronomy Secretary. The Club grows slowly so as to include carefully-scrutinised new recruits who volunteer themselves, with questions such as “can I eat the meat in the claws?”, to be voraciously ridiculed.

Article 3 of the Constitution of the Lobster Lunch Club states, and I quote: “The main course of the Annual Lunch shall be a large, fresh, whole lobster - per person. The lobster will be simply cooked (boiled, steamed, barbecued or similar) and served in its shell without the addition of sauce. Sauces may be served as side dishes. Side dishes such as salad and potatoes may be served.”

At our secret location, whose whereabouts cannot be shared, the boiled lobster, served with salad, potatoes and sauces on the side, is so fresh from the sea it is still recanting yarns from its earlier morning entanglement in a lobster pot on the seabed. If this photo, taken by a fellow-luncher, top chap and awesome photographer, doesn’t convince you then it shouldn’t be necessary to sit pen-in-claw and invest a lot of time authoring an application for membership of The Club. There’s greater success to be harnessed expending the energy toward escaping from a lobster pot.

Back in the real world it’s that time of year when lobster prices begin their ascent to the peak they reach at Christmas, and the disappearance of the tubs of lobster meat from the market stall until next summer is imminent.

So, for those who have not, for this year, had their fill of locally-sourced, appetisingly-priced lobster, there’s still a little time before the question of combining lobster with more assertive flavours becomes less financially palatable. I am not one whose palate dries as readily as some since, as I have said in Goan Lobster, I belong to a school, to which Rick Stein also attends, whose belief is that lobster’s flavour is assertive enough itself to be accompanied by carefully-selected balances of sympathetic but characterful flavours.

I therefore share a recipe recently adapted from one by Rick Stein for Lobster with Ginger and Spring Onions, a recipe which is ideally suited to ready-picked lobster meat. Also on the blog are Goan Lobster, Lobster, Cucumber and Apple Salad and Lobster Armoricaine. The latter dish is one I would happily make at any time of the year, that classy I feel that it is.

In the weeks to follow I’m looking forward to writing up recipes that feature the fish that are now coming up in the nets, like sole, (Maacher Jhol), plaice, gurnard, red mullet (Red Mullet with Cumin) and friends, and also the line-caught bass and mackerel. The list of recipes to come is lengthy so do please invite your friends and fellow seafoodies to visit the blog and subscribe for new dishes, ideas and stories.

And never let it be said a lobster is just for lunch!

Best fishes

Bute St Seafoodie

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