Lobster Poached in Butter

One of the reasons we moved over to CAT was to be there for the opening of lobster season. Every time I heard lobster I thought of Thomas Keller's recipe - Lobster Poached in Butter. We just had to catch some lobster so we could try that delicious-sounding recipe. First we needed bait for the lobster traps, so we took the dinghy out trolling. John & I dropped lines in and immediately we both hooked bonitos- what fun! We hauled in our catch, threw our lines back in and again immediately both hooked another bonito. These fish really fight, they were great fun to catch.

Here is a bonito in the lobster trap:Traps ready to set:Our dinghy steering acted up and made it difficult to pick up the traps in the dark and wind. Well that's our excuse for coming up empty on the first night!

The next night Curtis and Bill took our traps out for us:

And brought back these four beauties from our traps:Here they are after John cleaned them: And here they are poached in butter:I can't even begin to describe how delicious these were. They were so sweet and delicate, the best we've ever tasted. I'm sure being so fresh helped a lot. Here's the very simple recipe- I removed the meat from the tail, cut them in half lengthwise and poached them very gently in a Beuure Monte at about 180 degrees for six minutes. Beurre Monte is butter melted in 1 tablespoon of boiling water, this keeps the butter from separating. I served them with individual potato galettes and roasted beets. To make the potato galettes, I sliced a russet potato very thin, brushed with butter and layered with sliced shallots and cheese in individual tart pans. Baked at 375 degrees for about 1/2 hour. I wrapped the beets in foil and roasted for about an hour, peeled, sliced then quartered and dressed with olive oil, vinegar and salt & pepper.