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...