How to: Lobsters

I finished my exams on Monday and it seemed only appropriate to celebrate with lobsters and champagne for lunch.   A bit too extravagant for university students, you say?  Yea, we thought so, so we didn't drink champagne, but the lobsters were only 8 quid each.  It had to be done.

There are different schools of thought when it comes to cooking lobsters.  Do you freeze it first?  Do you just use a sharp knife and cut them down the middle?  Or directly plunge them into boiling water?  This may be a cruel and disturbing post for some people.

After much youtubing and googling, I had thought freezing them would be the best option.  It appeared the most humane way as they would be numb and I thought they wouldn't...rebel as much.  However, the fisherman told me to just dump them in boiling water.  Leave them in the sink, do not let them touch fresh water.  Bring a large pot of water to the boil and just put them in, head first.  Wait 6-7 minutes and take them out.  Wait for the water to boil again before adding other lobsters.  Serve with clarified butter and lemon juice.  Just heat some butter in a pan till bubbling and add lemon juice.

The lobsters were surprisingly compliant.  Oh and you know how they apparently "scream" when you put them in the water?  Don't worry, it's just air coming out of their shells. The key is to not think about it, do not get emotionally involved with your lunch.

Chestnut Pie with Chocolate and Rosemary

I'm loving all these herbs in desserts.  I made chocolate and rosemary crackers a while back, but that was still kind of sweet and savory -- this is a proper dessert.  It's very exciting for me.  

The star of the show here is chestnut, you may decide yourself how much of the chocolate and rosemary flavors you want to bring in, you decide which notes to promote.  But you see how the three flavors work together.  Chocolate and chestnut are happily put together in many wonderful desserts.  Similarly, chestnut and rosemary are often found together in amazing roasts.  The three complement each other because they all have this earthy and woody note.  They combine in a just beautiful manner.  The rosemary flavor doesn't come in right away in your first bite, but it flourishes in the next second, deepening the flavors of the chestnut and chocolate.

The crust, most of the time I'm just too lazy to make my own shortcrust so here I made a crumbly chocolate oat crust. If you were to use shortcrust for this, may I suggest a chocolate shortcrust (I have a recipe here). It's very light and spongy because of the number of eggs in here. It's lovely.

Enjoooy :)  Oh and I'm done with exams!


Ingredients
Filling
250g chestnut puree
3 eggs, separated
a dash of lemon juice
50g butter, melted
1/2 sprig rosemary
Good quality dark chocolate

Chocolate Oat Crust
3 tbsp cocoa
1 1/2 cup oats
4 tbsp cold butter, cubed
1 tbsp caster sugar
1 tbsp water

Method
Crust
Whizz all the dry ingredients together in a food processor, then add the butter and water and pulse a couple of times.  Grease a pie dish and press the oat crust into the middle and up the sides of it.  Bake at 200C for 15 minutes, take out and leave to cool.

Filling
Beat the egg yolks with the chestnut puree for a good 15 minutes or so until light.  You want to incorporate as much air into it as possible.  Then add the butter.  Beat the egg whites with a dash of lemon juice until stiff peaks form and gently fold it into the chestnut mixture.  Pour into the crust, sprinkle with some rosemary leaves and bake for 25-30 minutes at 180C. Leave the pie to cool then give a generous grating of dark chocolate plus some more rosemary

Cantonese Dim Sum

So how much do you know about Cantonese dim sum?  As I was looking through some old photos I stumbled upon these dim sums I had at the Noble Court restaurant in Beijing (highly recommended, one of the best places to have Cantonese dim sum in Beijing.  In my humble opinion).  I'm going home soon. Oh the excitement.

Ok I hope you find this educational, or at least I hope this will motivate you to wikipedia some of this and start planning your gastronomic trip to China.  By the way, the pronunciation guide I have for these are how you would say them in Mandarin, not Cantonese.

I'll start with 叉烧包 (cha shao bao) -- BBQ pork buns. These are my favorite.  These are quite common in Western Chinese restaurants, actually, so you might know of them.  It's just pork marinated in this sweet and savory cha shao sauce (a mixture of soy sauces, corn flour, sugar etc.  You can find the sauce easily in most Chinese supermarkets -- char siu sauce in Cantonese), then stuffed in a light yet rich bun.  To die for.

You can have the BBQ pork on its own as well, commonly eaten with just rice and some simple steamed vegetables over rice (叉烧饭) -- cha shao fan.

Then there are these 萝卜糕 (luo bo gao) -- turnip cakes.  Mainly made with rice flour, sausages and turnips.  Sensational.

Then there are these 肠粉 (chang fen), which are rice noodle rolls with filling.  Served with oyster sauce on top.  Mmmm.

Then you've got a wide range of rice flour steamed dumplings, of which the most famous is 虾饺 (xia jiao), which are dumplings filled with prawns.  Theses are filled with prawns and asparagus. Dip them in Chinese smoked vinegar and it's heaven.  The dough of the dumplings are meant to be thin and translucent so you can see the filling inside.

And then there are all the other miscellaneous things such as these bean curd parcels.  i.e. tofu parcels.  They're like tofu skins -- oh there's so much more to tofu than just firm and silken tofu.

And then the sweet stuff.  This is a pumpkin sago soup.

These are 流沙包 (liu sha bao) -- egg custard buns. There are two types of custard buns, one where it's just normal custard (奶黄包 - nai huang bao), and then there are these with a more liquid center.  They're made with salted duck yolks.  I know, it sounds weird.  It's not even sweet and savory, it's just sweet and wonderful. Liu sha means flowing sand.

And these are Hong Kong egg tarts (蛋挞 - dan ta).  Oh bless the Portuguese for their influence.  They're made with condensed milk usually. They love their condensed milk. Oh and instead of peanut butter and jam sandwiches, they have peanut butter and condensed milk sandwiches.   Shallowed fried in butter.  Yea.  Good stuff.

So I hope next time you'll be a bit more adventurous in a Cantonese restaurant when ordering dim sum -- hopefully you'll be able to find these on the menu.