Lobster Bisque, Seafood A La Nage, Frangipan Tart. September 2011

We wrapped up our evening with a bit of sweetness: Frangipan Tart topped with glazed pears.

This is our Seafood A La Nage. We served the fresh molluscan, calamari, shrimp and vegetable in a fortified fish stock and garlic bread on the side. It was a very mild flavored dish.

Hint: when you buy seafood such as molluscan always buy live ones with shells that are complete locked closed. They should also smell like the ocean, no stronger. Clean them well by scrubbing them with a clean sponge (no soap) and rinsing the quickly in iced clear water. Once you bring them to a boil and the shell cracks open, they are done.

The squids should be cleaned by removing the inside feather, organs, paint bucket, beak and anything else that is found inside. You should only use the clean crown and the clean trunk. We did not use octopus because it is considered to be tough and hard to eat.

This was the Mishe we served with our Lobster Bisque Soup. Boris (our starter dough) is getting more mature as the days goes by. His flavor is giving a us accentuated flavored bread. We baked this Mishe in 550 degrees F. and purposely let the crust brown, by leaving it long enough and leaving a steaming cooking sheet half full on the bottom of the oven while the Mishe baked. It taste like a wood burning oven, like Brazilian pizza crust!

We plated it in a clear round plate with the bowl in the middle, big chunck of steamed and seasoned lobster and Mishe bread on the side.

One of the secrets for making a good Lobster Bisque sauce that is flavorful and not to heavy is using a good fortified lobster stock and thickening it with pureed rice. In our fortified sauce we sweated the lobster shells with mire poix and fish pieces and once we got the right flavor we steamed some white long grain rice, pureed it in a rice mill and mixed it in our sauce. 

Praparing the sauce for our Lobster Bisque.

Hint: always but live lobsters and keep their claws tied. A claw bide from a lobster can cut off your finger. I was told not to feel too sorry for them as we cut them and boiled them, since they do not have the sensory part of the brain that feels pain. In my opinion that was really hard to believe and I still felt really bad while watching the lobster being broken and desiccated while still moving and then being thrown into the boiling water.