Lobster: French & German Variations

Elena was home for 24 hours between her trip from Colombia and Burma. We managed to go to the Aqua Day Spa, get a pedicure and I was able to feed her twice. Both times we had lobster that was prepared in ways mentioned in the 1000 things book.

Lunch was a cold German salad version called Hummer-und-Huhnersalat which is a lobster and chicken salad. The book has a recipe in it and I followed that pretty carefully but the idea is that you combine cooked lobster and chicken which have been cut into pieces with salt/pepper/mustard and/or curry. Green pies are added for crunch and some kind of creamy binding agent like mayo or in my case fat-free sour cream is used to bind it all together. I used finely diced green snap peas instead of just using the peas themselves and served it in lettuce cups. This was such a simple recipe and one that really was delicious. How much of each ingredient you use depends on your personal taste and since I like curry, i focused on that more than the mustard and used hot madras curry. I’ld make this one again.

The French version was warm and called Homard a Americaine. I looked long and hard for a lower calorie version and found it on Eric Ripert’s Cooking Light site. I did only use lobster tails, poaching them in broth only (no butter), made sure the whipping cream was fat free half-half and threw in carrots on the side to add veggies. The end result was that this was even lower calories than those that Eric promised on the site (395/serving). A few interesting things was that the brandy and vermouth went together (I doubted this) and that using pre-bought stock made the whole thing a bit salty. Make your own stock…. Would I make it again? Likely not and yet I would encourage everyone to have it one time. After all, Mimi says it is a 1000 thing.