The Last Fish: Lobster Chowder

This is the first in an occasional series about good seafood choices, based on the recommendations of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program.

A client recently requested a "special" birthday dinner for a friend who loves seafood. I could not think of anything more decadent and delicious than meaty lobster chowder. And isn't it nice to have such a generous patron who can afford to foot the bill?

I turned to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Seafood Watch" listing fully expecting to find that my Maine lobster was an "excellent" choice. But, lo, Maine lobster rises only to "good" alternative, mainly because no one is quite sure how many lobsters there are out in the oceans and because management of the species is considered to be not the best. Also, right whales and other mammals are apt to become tangled in lobster traps.

There are other lobsters that rate as "excellent" choices. There's the trap-caught spiny lobster from the U.S. and Australia, for instance, and the wild-caught spiny lobster from the Baja penninsula. But avoid the Caribbean spiny lobster: These typically are overfished and harvested too young.

Lobster chowder violates some of my most basic principles for chowder. It's not simple, and it's certainly not cheap. My favorite method for making an authentic chowder is to layer fish with onions, potatoes and pilot crackers in a pot and cover it with fish stock. I can easily imagine the ancient mariner constructing just such a frugal, one-pot dish is his vessel out at sea.

For a lobster chowder, you first need to cook the lobsters, then clean them. We used seven 1 1/2-pound Maine lobsters to feed 12 people. The lobsters were lowered two-at-a-time into a large pot of boiling salted water and cooked four minutes, just to the verge of doneness. Harvesting the meat is a mess: winter lobsters have hard shells (it's the peelers, or soft-shelled lobsters, you see at the lobster shacks in summer). I used poultry shears to open the tails and a cleaver to crack open the claws. Be sure to spread newspapers over your work area. There will be lots of wetness and goo.

Jaspar White, whose 50 Chowders is the text I use as a reference, recommends making a stock by cooking the lobster carcasses for one hour with water, white wine, chopped tomatoes, sliced onions, celery, carrots, garlic, thyme, bay leaves, fennel seeds and black peppercorns. I cooked my stock very gently for four hours to achieve a rich flavor. After straining out all the solids, I then reduced the stock by about 25 percent over low heat, skimming it frequently. It is a very potent brew, indeed.

The stock can be made a day ahead. To finish the chowder, saute four ounces of slab bacon, cut into small pieces, at the bottom of a heavy pot until almost crisp. Remove the bacon pieces and cook a large onion, cut into medium dice, and the leaves from two or three sprigs thyme, chopped fine, in the bacon fat. (If there's not enough fat, add some butter. Nobody said this was a heart-healthy dish.) Stir in two teaspoons Hungarian paprika and cook one minute longer, stirring frequently.

Now add to the pot 1 1/2-pounds Yukon Gold or other all-purpose potatoes cut into 3/4-inch pieces. Cover with lobster stock, turn up the heat and boil, covered, until the potatoes are cooked through. If the chowder doesn't seem thick enough, mash some of the potatoes using a potato masher.

Using three hard-shell lobsters, this will make enough chowder to feed six people. Just before serving, stir the lobster meat--cut into generous pieces--and up to 2 cups heavy cream into the chowder. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Ladle the chowder into large, shallow bowls and garnish with fresh chives.. We serve it with a basket of yeasted sweet potato rolls on the table.

Top-Cut Buns

You might think making a lobster roll would be the easiest thing in the world, more or less like falling off a log in your sleep, but that would be a mistake. A lobster roll is no mere sandwich. A couple of serious protocols pertain. Here, I'll tell you why.

First, consider the bun you plan to stuff with your lobster meat. You may have read a description in a cookbook or a magazine recipe where the author says, simply spread the lobster meat inside a hot dog roll. Wrong. I can't tell you what a disappointment it is to see so many authors and so-called authorities simply skip over the first essential step of making a lobster roll. And that is finding some good, authentic top-cut buns.

Top-cut buns do look a little like your garden variety hot dog roll, I'll grant you that, but there are crucial differences to consider. The most important is, of course, that unlike hot dog rolls, which are sliced through the width of the bun, top-cut buns--as the name implies--are sliced on a vertical axis, beginning at the top.

If you examine a top-cut bun closely, you'll see that what it resembles more than anything, when viewed from the top down, is two extra-thick slices of ordinary bread pressed closely together. The top of the buns are browned, like a normal bread loaf. More significantly, this leaves the sides of the buns exposed and creamy white, perfect for browning with a knob of melted butter in the bottom of a heavy skillet. And that's the ideal for a lobster roll: buns browned and exquisitely crisped on the sides. This is something you cannot do with your every day hot dog bun.

I have looked all over the District of Columbia for top-cut buns and haven't found any. I didn't really expect to. Top-cup cut buns seem to be a New England phenomenon, offered for sale in the local supermarket under such brand names as Country Kitchen from the LePage Bakeries in Auburn, Maine. (Incongruously, Country Kitchen calls their buns "Frankfurter Rolls," which only confuses matters further. But don't be fooled.)

There are other brands that I suspect you will find nowhere but in the range of the Boston Red Sox fan base, although I could be wrong. If you are desperate for a lobster roll and, like those of us in the District of Columbia, are not in the top-cut bun distribution area, I suppose you could use an ordinary hot dog roll. Try browning the inside of the bun, spread out flat in melted butter in the bottom of a heavy skillet.

Now the lobster filling is actually the simplest part, assuming you've spent the requisite time picking over your lobsters cooked the night before to salvage every last delectable morsel. As I mentioned before, this is usually a task taken up by our friend Shelly, who grew up in South Freeport, Maine, within spitting distance of the lobster boats tied up in the marina, and has been eating lobster since she had teeth to chew with.

Shelly approaches this task of picking with an unusual zeal that I believe suits her personality. She is a dedicated public defense attorney--in fact, dean of a public law school dedicated to public service--and I think this dedication to public service carries over into her lobster picking. It is rather a thankless task, searching out every last bit of edible meat amongst all the little nooks and cartilaginous crannies of the lobster carcass. But someone obviously has to do it, and none better than a dedicated public servant.

For god and humanity, I say.

Shelly also has some very specific thoughts on how the lobster should be dressed. Apparently many magazine editors and cookbook authors cringe at the idea of so few ingredients being listed for the lobster roll fitting, because you will see celery, onions, parsley and all sorts of other things suggested. But I think Shelly's way is best and that is to mess with the lobster hardly at all and just let the pure lobster flavor shine through. If anything, add a scant amount of mayonnaise--enough to barely hold the meat together in a delicate unctuousness--salt, freshly ground pepper and a squirt of lemon. Toss the ingredients together and fill your toasted bun to your heart's content.

Serve the lobster roll with some artisan potato chips. We like the Cape Cod brand, but you could even serve chips you make yourself. A cold beer works nicely to wash it down, but you should have the beverage of your choice. If you can't finish all the lobster (a ridiculous thought, I know) it will be fine as a snack later, or the next day.

Cooking Lobster

There is something reassuring about looking out from the porch of our cottage and watching the changing of the tides in our neck of Casco Bay. We are just a few feet from the water, somewhat elevated in the trees, and where we are the bay stretches to a narrow point where it ends. The sailboats sit at their moorings off in the middle where it's deep enough. For when the tides recedes, all you see for a couple hundred yards from shore is mud.

Then the tide brings the water back, about eight feet of depth, so that you can step right off the marsh grasses where we tie up the dinghies and where the kelp lays in thick matts and go for a swim.

It seemed like everyone was loafing more than usual yesterday, just reading the papers and catching up on the first-place run the Red Sox are having. The ladies drove off to Portland to look at art and none of the guys had enough energy to make a plan for sailing. So we didn't shove off till well into the afternoon. But then our sail on the old Hinckley sloop, which Shannon keeps in tip-top condition, turned into a bit of an adventure. A light breeze swelled into a 15-knot blow, to where we (meaning Shannon) had to switch out the jib for something smaller and also take a reef in the mainsail.

That made things a bit more pleasant for Shelly, Meg and Hank, who were complaining quite a bit about the boat being somewhat severely heeled over to the starboard side. Now the plan was to sail till about cocktail hour, then make a beeline back to the marina so we could cook lobsters for 13 persons.

As you might imagine, lobsters are something of a preoccupation here in South Freeport, Maine. We talk about eating lobster pretty much every day and actually do eat some maybe every other day. John, Shelly's husband, got bored Saturday around lunch time so I walked with him 15 minutes to the local lobster shack, formally called Harraseeket Lunch and Lobster for referred to locally as The Harraseeket. It wasn't as crowded as I would have expected on a Saturday but still a little before noon. So we walked down to the lobster pound window and placed an order for two "large" lobsters (about 1.5 pounds) and two soft drinks. This set us back $61. Lobsters are not cheap, even in Maine, although you do get a generous break if you cook them yourselves.

Our lobsters were ready in about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, the picnic tables surrounding the lobster shack were beginning to fill and a long line was forming at the take-out window. The lobsters arrived perfectly cooked, almost too hot to touch, on a Styrofoam tray with napkins, a slender plastic picking fork and a small container of melted butter.

This time of year you are served "peeler" lobsters, meaning the lobsters have recently molted, or shed their old shell, and are forming a new shell that is still soft. In fact, the shell is soft enough that you can break it apart with your bare hands. So that's what you do. Start with the legs, breaking them apart at the joints and sucking the meat and juices our. Then work on the claws, where so much of the good meat is and chunks big enough that you can dredge it in the butter. When you've finishes those, pull off the tail and crack it down the middle on the underside. This frees us the meat so you can slide it out all in one piece. You should have several good mouth-fulls, also dredged in butter.

Now it's time to do a little fancy digging, pulling the shell part off the middle portion of the lobster where the legs were once attached. Inside you'll see some wavy, finger-shaped appendages that look like meat but are really the gills. These are not edible. What you need to do is crack open all the small compartments in amongst the cartilage and pick out the many smaller pieces of flesh that are located inside. This is the true skill of lobster picking, locating these small pieces of meat. Shelly is an expert and truly enjoys it. That's why we always give her our lobster carcasses after a meal, because she will sit there and find so much meat we didn't even realize was there, and save it in a bowl for tomorrow's lobster rolls (more about that later).

Inside the lobster you might also find a green goop commonly called the tomale that is the liver. Many people spurn the liver but anyone who's tasted it and has any sense at all knows it is delicious.

So after we got back to the dock from our sail we bought 20 lobsters for something like $6 a pound. I filled a bucket with sea water down at the beach and we cooked the lobsters in two batches in a big pot set over a propane burner outside the cottage. Several leftover salads were served as well and two big bowls set on the dining table for the shells. Then things got pretty quite for a while as people satisfied themselves cracking lobsters and dredging the meat in butter and drinking white wine and getting their hands all greasy.

When we'd had our fill, Shelly and Meg started the process of scooping out the remaining lobsters and tracking down any stray bits of meat for the next day's lobster rolls.

Our seven-year-old daughter, meanwhile, has become reacquainted with her friend Alice who lives in South Freeport and they were supposed to have a sleepover at Alice's house nearby. But just as we were finishing our lobsters the girls and Alice's mother showed up, explaining that a Daddy Long Legs had found his way into the girls' bed and the sleepover had to be cancelled.

Those are the kind of things that happen when you're on vacation in Maine.