Thread: Pappardelle With Lobster Cream Sauce

Pappardelle With Lobster Cream Sauce
This recipe calls for lobster butter. If you are lucky, you have a tub of lobster butter in your freezer just waiting for you to make this dish. If you aren’t so lucky, you will have to put this dish off until you have a little preliminary dinner party feeding your unsuspecting friends lobsters with the ulterior motive of getting the lobstery stuff required for lobster butter. If you play it cool and pour the wine freely, your friends will never guess they have been used.

Ingredients
(in order of appearance)

½ cup extra virgin olive oil
¾ cup lobster butter
1 cup shallots (finely chopped)
1 tbsp fresh cracked black pepper
¾ cup cognac
1 cup chardonnay
3 cups shrimp stock (2) 28 oz cans tomato puree
Zest of one large lemon
Juice from ½ that same lemon
½ cup chopped fresh tarragon
1 pint heavy cream
(2) 1 lb packages pappardelle
1 cup chopped fresh parsley (flat leaf)

Procedure
Begin cooking the pasta according to package directions. The sauce comes together very quickly. If all is right with the world, the pasta and sauce should be ready just about the same time. If you have company and they are with you as you’re cooking, it will work out so well you will knock their socks off (a good thing for a “first date” meal).


Stir the olive oil and lobster butter in a large sauté pan over high heat. The addition of olive oil greatly increases the smoke point of your lobster butter. Burnt lobster butter is a very bad thing

Add the shallots to the hot butter/oil blend. It is best to ask for silence when you put the chopped shallots in the pan. There are some sounds that make us feel safe and comfortable. One of those sounds is the sizzle of chopped shallots hitting hot oil in a pan.

Add the pepper to the sizzling shallots. Stir frequently with a wooden spoon or spatula. I make special cherry wood cooking tools called “spurtles”. But that’s for another day.

Once the shallots are cooked and the house is smelling really really great add the cognac.
As it heats in the pan, call the attention of your guests.

Using a long nosed lighter, flame the cognac. If you are confident, turn the lights down just before ignition. While it is important to the dish to burn off the alcohol, it is important for the memories of the evening that the flame be noticed.

To be continued...

As soon as the flame of the cognac dies out, add the chardonnay, stirring well scraping the pan.
Stirring constantly, add the shrimp stock.

Add the zest of one large lemon

And half the juice of that same lemon (or all the juice of half that lemon)

Into the pan goes the tomato puree. Keep stirring!

The water in the big stock pot should be boiling and ready to receive your beautiful Pappardelle.


To Be Continued....

When making sauces I always add the dry seasonings early and the fresh herbs toward the end. So we are now chopping and adding the fresh tarragon. I hope you’re hungry because it’s almost ready!

Stir in the heavy cream and just as the sauce looks like it’s about to boil, shut off the stove. If you have an electric stove, remove the pan from the burner.


Look at that beautiful pastel pink! Drain the pasta and return it to the empty stock pot. Immediately pour the sauce over the pasta and mix it together very well. Add the chopped parsley and toss again.

Plate it up with some parmesano reggiano. Garnish with parsley. Serve with a light wine. Have fun! The lobster, cognac and tarragon are like that first love affair of high school sweethearts. The affinity for one another is so perfect it is impossible to imagine them apart.
Oh, someone asked me if Basil would help this dish.
Basil tried to help but he just got in the way.

I put the recipe for lobster butter way over in the Discussion Forum. I apologize for any inconvenience. If you would like a digital file of both recipes (or anything else I have written) please let me know and I'll gladly send you a Word file.

Have fun!

Brad

As a food lover I really love this thread. As a 20 year professional bread baker I object to your use of the dough knife for picking up the chopped shallots.


such a menial task for such a wonderful tool.

Originally Posted by JMS

As a food lover I really love this thread. As a 20 year professional bread baker I object to your use of the dough knife for picking up the chopped shallots.


such a menial task for such a wonderful tool.

Wow Mark I admire your remarkable attention to detail. I was actually wondering if anyone would notice my "dough blade". First I want to thank you for the compliment on my craftsmanship, I made that thing. While it is certainly based on a standard dough blade, take another look at it. I designed and made it to pick up my smoked beef briskets after I have sliced them and quickly remove them from the cutting board to a chafing dish for serving. The dimensions of my blade are 9.5"x 5.5"x 0.050" (about twice the standard dough blade). Notice also I made the handle of curly cherry. In the photo below you can see the antique forged pot fork I re-handled from the same piece of wood. My blade is very good for picking up large quantities of chopped stuff and scraping the cutting board clean. I'm sure you know it is not good to scrape a cutting board with the edge of your good cutlery

I like using cherry for kitchen tools because it changes as it ages. It grows darker and warmer. Did you know that cherry wood gets a tan if you put it in the sunlight? If you didn't know that, try cutting a fresh surface on a cherry board. Take a key off your key ring and lay it on the fresh cut cherry and put the board with the key on it out in the sun for an hour or two. When you pick up the key it will leave a tan line.

Thats one great tutorial and if you haven't been a food lover until now,
this makes you one!

Where's the scratch and sniff window on those photos? I bet that pegged the cholesterol meter for a few hours....twas lovely. I have a girl that will try to whip that up.

why so early!
now i'm SO hungry!
looks delicious!

My wife hates cream sauces (I know...it's crazy).
I need to find some friends to "use" for lobster butter and then for this dish....hmmm...its going to be hard, I'm sure.
Icedog..THANK YOU! It looks wonderful!

Originally Posted by smokelaw1

My wife hates cream sauces (I know...it's crazy).
I need to find some friends to "use" for lobster butter and then for this dish....hmmm...its going to be hard, I'm sure.
Icedog..THANK YOU! It looks wonderful!

I don't know where you are in relation to this chain of markets but last week, Caraluzzi's was selling lobsters for $4.99 lb! Give them a call. The sale may still be on http://www.caraluzzis.com/