I recently had some lobster heads made available to me.
That's all I'm saying.
Looking to make things disappear? I'll take them off your hands. Get my drift?
I've had people give me everything from a bag of raw pork fat to fish heads with their eyes gouged out (fish eyes will make your stock cloudy----good to know).
My freezer is perpetually full of "projects". It's like freaking Jeffrey Dahmer in there.
Before you try to cite this post as evidence of a borderline personality disorder... YOU may have boneless, skinless, chicken boobs in your freezer. I have their feet.
Please explain to me how we're so different.
Americans aren't used to seeing whole animals (especially live ones) in their local supermarket. Butchering has been visually sanitized to encourage consumerism. The ability to buy a whole dead chicken with its head and feet removed is pretty recent stuff, history-wise.
The one place you'll MAYBE see whole, intact animals is in your supermarket lobster tank.
Many a happy trip to the market has been ruined for me by seeing these doomed little guys all huddled together in the corner with rubber bands on their hands trying desperately to shield one another from the mysterious latex-gloved hand of death.
I KNOW they're only a few chromosomes away from a NYC roach. I'm fully aware they're just a big red bug in the water.
But I just can't "do the deed".
I may be a member of "the family", but I'm not "a made man".
What can I say?
The heart is a lousy hunter.
But if the lobster is already dead, and there's some melted butter nearby...
And nothing could be more dead than these pre-cooked heads.
I squirreled them home with big plans to turn these decapitated lobster heads into some dee-licious lobster stock.
A basic fish/seafood stock can be anything from some leftover shrimp shells thrown into a pot to an elaborate production with fresh Herbes de Provence and shallots and lemongrass and all that good stuff.
I've made plenty of stock in my day, but never one from lobster heads. I worried that maybe there was some stuff in there not so great for stock. So I put the victims of Madame Guillotine in the freezer and went online to do some research.
Not a whole lot of info out there on making stock from lobster heads.
I did discover that the tomalley (sometimes spelled tamale) may be inside of there. This is lobster liver, basically. I'd heard of it, but frankly, I'm not around whole lobster a lot. By the time it gets to my plate, it's usually just a lobster tail on a Surf-n-Turf platter or it's been all mayonaise-d up on a cold lobster salad sandwich. But I'd heard that it has a different taste (and can possibly be full of toxins).
It IS a liver, after all.
Some people LOVE the tomalley! They spread it on crackers like it's freaking lobster pâté. And when they hear about people throwing it away, first thing out of their mouths is something that distinctly sounds like, "Stupid white people."
I've never eaten it, so I can't comment.
But after checking in with a few friends who love tomalley, they unanimously agreed that it's probably not a flavor you want in your stock. A few suggested that the bitter flavor might get boiled out of the tomalley (and yeah---there was gonna be some in there). But no one had any proof of anything. This was apparently going to be uncharted territory.
I pulled a head out of my freezer to defrost and began studying up on lobster anatomy. An hour later, I felt as ready as the creepy serial-killer in Manhunter. But instead of "In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida" as my Dexter-like theme music, I put on some old Django Reinhardt tunes to calm my nerves and crept into my kitchen armed with nothing more than an espresso spoon and a cheese spreader.
As I performed my surgery while Django strummed away at "Jeepers Creepers" on my iTunes playlist, I began to think about the world and how it works. Because after all, this lobster was only able to survive to the requisite 1.5 pounds because he ate other living creatures.
He's not so innocent! And lobsters will eat ANYTHING!
If you're a creature smaller than a lobster (or maybe even a big Dungeness crab, but you just shed your shell and you're all vulnerable-like)-----he will EAT YOU ALIVE!
If you took the rubber bands off the guys at Red Lobster and dropped a newborn baby in there---those lobsters would eat your baby!!!
Like a dingo!
Oh, all sorts of crazy thoughts go thru your brain while you're gutting lobster heads.
So---I think I did this right.
Here is a lobster head sliced off at the neck. See that greenish-looking stuff at the top? Apparently that's what I needed to get out.
After going in like a ghoul with my espresso spoon, I had all this gooky stuff on my plate.
I'm guessing that big green glob is the tomalley. Some of the rest of it might be good. Or it might be brains. I wasn't about to pick thru a few crumbs to find out which was which.
What I was left with was a lobotomized lobster head.
Plopped my heads in a pot of water with some leeks, carrots, celery, garlic, fresh parsley, bay leaves, salt, black peppercorns, and some dry white wine.
Within minutes, my apartment smelled like lobster heaven!
Almost three hours later (oh yeah---I let this one simmer long and super-low to concentrate for three full hours) I had a giant bowl of deliciousness.
What can you do with lobster stock? The possibilities are endless!
A base for a creamy seafood bisque. A fragrant lobster risotto. Or just toss some veggies in a pan with olive oil, add some pasta, a pat of butter, and a ladle full of stock.
So what I'm saying is.... I'm open. I'm available to take certain things off your hands. You know, take care of business for you. Maybe you could find something to do for someone such as myself?
