At Home Date-Night: Martha's Lobsters with Beurre Blanc

I recently decided to start a new tradition of Friday night dinners with ingredients sourced from our local Farmer's Market. 

This past Friday, as I was picking up some fresh Halibut from the fishmonger, I saw someone else picking up live lobsters.  I had recently stumbled on a lobster recipe in the June 2011 eidition of 'Living', so I decided to take a chance (i.e. I have never in my life cooked lobster!) and order a couple of these crustacean fellows.  Since the lobsters were 'special order' we arranged to pick ours up the next morning. 

Saturday morning they were handed over to us, covered in damp paper towels in a freezer box with an ice pack.  I guess keeping them cold puts them into a sleepy state, so when we got home we put them straight into the fridge until ready to cook.

The recipe we used was Martha Stewart's Lobsters with Beurre Blanc (the recipe can be found at this link: http://www.marthastewart.com/354686/lobsters-beurre-blanc).  As with all Martha recipes, you can pretty much double the prep time on this one.  45 minutes, Martha?  Really?  I think our pot of water took that long to boil!! Haha!

As lobsters are kind of fancy, I decided I should lay a fitting table, so here it is, dressed for our little at-home date night :).

Here I am about to submerge lobster #1 into a stock pot of boiling water.  If I'm honest I have to admit that I was a little shakey at the thought of killing these poor innocent little guys, but I put my emotions aside in the name of good food and culinary exploration ... and hopefully their death was immediate and painless (?!).  That's what I'll tell myself anyway :).

Not sure why I have a 'come hither' look in this photo of me holding a couple of boiled lobsters, but anywho ...  Aren't they just gorgeous right out of the pot like that?  Such a beautiful deep red. Like most things in nature, God's design is perfect and presentation really can't be improved upon, but we sure do try, don't we?!!

Here I am chopping the lobsta' (what my Bostonian friends call it) lengthwise just like Martha Stewart, baby!

The amount and texture of the green tomalley that I subsequently removed, along with the head and other intestiney matter, was a bit off-putting, but I managed to get through it :).  

After chopping the mostly cooked lobsters lengthwise, we spooned our buerre blanc sauce (white wine sauce with shallots, orange juice, heavy cream and LOTS of butter) over them and broiled them for a couple minutes. 

We served them up with rosemary red potatoes, burgundy (green) beans, curried red peppers and squash, and a lovely ciabatta for soaking up excess buerre blanc - divine.  Oh, and we paired with a nice oaky Chardonnay (Francis Ford Coppola's Votre Sante 2009 Chardonnay). 

And now I must give credit where credit is due.  My husband was an amazing chef's assistant and pretty much single-handedly sorted out the beurre blanc and all veggies / sides.  The only thing he steared clear of was anything and everything to do with killing and butchering the lobsters, which he left up to me.  Gotta' love my squeemish husband :). 

And now with this successful culinary experience under my belt, I will confidently prepare my first ever lobster-bisque soup today with the leftover chunks of succulent lobster meat!  Wish me luck, friends :).