A Simple Lobster Bisque for Valentine’s Day

Ok guys, how’s this for a great fish course? Lobster Bisque. A bisque is a cream soup that uses the shells of crustaceans (shellfish like shrimp & lobster) and is often pureed. What’s not to love? Sweet, succulent lobster, creamy base, and easy, too (but you don’t have to tell her that).

There are recipes out there that call for setting things on fire (flambé), chopping up whole lobsters, and that have ingredient lists as long as your arm. That’s all well and good, but what we’re aiming for here is maximum impact with a minimum of frazzled nerves, so you can both enjoy your romantic Valentine’s Day dinner and not smell like you just crawled out of the sea.

Easy but Elegant Lobster Bisque

Ingredients

1 - 2 cups cooked lobster meat (you can now find lobster meat frozen or canned in most supermarkets, otherwise buy one and cook it yourself)
½ cup dry sherry or dry white wine
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
½ cup onion, diced
¼ cup celery, diced
¼ cup carrot, diced
Salt and white pepper, to taste
½ teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning, or to taste
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cups whole milk
1 cup half and half
1 cup chicken stock (if you have lobster stock, use that instead)

How to Make Lobster Bisque at Home

Combine the lobster meat with the sherry. Cover and refrigerate.

In a hot pan over medium heat, melt the butter. Once it stops sputtering, add the onion, celery, carrot, salt and pepper and Old Bay. Stir and let cook until the vegetables are translucent and are getting soft.

Add the tomato paste and cook for another couple of minutes.

Add the flour and cook for two to three minutes, stirring all the time.

While whisking, add the cold milk, half and half and stock and bring to a boil. Let boil for about 1 minute, still whisking constantly. Turn the heat down and let simmer until slightly reduced.

Now, you have two options.

Option 1: using an immersion blender, blend the soup until smooth.

Option 2: Strain the soup through a fine mesh strainer, pressing down on the solids.

Taste, and add more salt, pepper or Old Bay, if you think it needs it. Add the reserved lobster and sherry to the pot and simmer for just a couple of minutes, so the lobster is heated through.

Serve with crusty bread and maybe a little sour cream on the top. If you want to be really fancy, sprinkle on a little chopped tarragon as garnish.

Alternative Direction

If you don’t want to make your own lobster bisque, you can look for a quality commercial brand at your local supermarket or gourmet store. Many of them now have there own signature label and are making some decent soups. I buy fresh soup from Genuardi’s supermarket once in a while and it is good but not as good if you make it yourself.

You can also buy find some good lobster bisque online. These are commercial companies that sell lobsters but also sell bisques and chowders. Of course they do, what are they suppose to do with all those shell? You will end up paying a lot in shipping and because lobster bisque is really easy to make at home, I encourage you to give the recipe above a try.

LobsterGram.com - sells whole lobsters as well as their own lobster bisque

Gortonsfreshseafood.com- another good choice for buying seafood online

Linton’s Seafood

Another alternative is homemade but with the help of a commercial product. There is a good lobster stock reduction called Glace de Fruits de Mer that you can read about at GatewayGourmet.com - lobster stock. They have a recipe for Lobster Bisque using this Glace de Fruits de Mer that is sort of homemade but not entirely.

Serving Instructions

There’s going to be a lot of food served on this special night and lobster bisque is rich and creamy so go easy. A small cup should be plenty. Think of it as a tasting menu. A lot of small servings. Go the extra mile and buy some fresh chives to chop up and use as a garnish. Home cooks just don’t use enough garnish with their cooking. It is simple enough to do but really improves the presentation. I might suggest a dollop of creme fraiche, but this soup should be rich enough.

Next, we’ll look at salads. Don’t forget to check out my Squidoo lens called A Romantic Valentine’s Day Dinner. It’s full of interesting information about Valentine’s Day and pulls all these blog posts together with additional recipes, videos, movie suggestions and a lot more.

Image from Linton’s Seafood

Romantic Cheese Course

Lobster Bisque Recipe

How to Make A Great Salad For Valentine’s Day

Pork Medallions with Apricot Glaze Recipe

Steak with Wild Mushroom Sauce

Fish en Papillote or Fish in Parchment Paper

Chocolate Souffle

Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

My Squidoo - A Reluctant Valentine’s Day Dinner

Clean Out the Fridge: Making Turkey Soup From Leftovers

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Thanksgiving is almost here so let’s continue thinking about what to do with all those leftovers. You’re most likely finding a lot of information about how to cook a turkey and what to serve with it in your favorite cooking magazines and local newspapers, but let’s talk about what to do with all those leftovers. We already looked at preparing Leftover Thanksgiving Day Turkey Chili so now let’s look at Leftover Thanksgiving Day Soup.

There are two dilemmas that home cooks have around the holidays. One is making room in the refrigerator for the holiday feast. Dilemma two is getting rid of the leftovers after the holiday feast. Fortunately, there is one solution to both of these problems: soup.

If you don’t have any stock lying around before the holidays, make sure you have some good quality chicken or turkey stock from the store. The simplest soup is literally:

Open your refrigerator -
Take out the leftovers -
Dump them in a pot -
Cover them with stock -
Heat -
Serve

Ok, so maybe you need a little more direction than that? Let’s go see what’s leftover in my fridge. Okay, here’s what I have:

Half a jar of salsa
2 limes
Some leftover roast chicken
2 jalapeno peppers
Wonton skins
Carrots
Celery
Peeled cippolini onions
Bacon
Sliced lunch meat - roast beef and ham
Potato scraps in water leftover from squaring a potato for dicing

What’s in the pantry that I can use?

Dried cranberry beans
Mini fusilli pasta
Hot sauce

Sounds like soup to me. I’m thinking some sort of a spin on Tortilla soup.
Here’s what I’ll do.

Quarter the onions. Cut the wonton skins in strips; brush with a little oil, sprinkle with salt and brown/crisp in the oven. (If you have a Fry Daddy, go for the deep fry)

Slice celery and carrots on the bias, then cut jalapenos into small dice.
Cook the bacon and crumble into small pieces.
Cut up lunch meat into little pieces.
Dice potato scraps.

Heat a pan big enough to hold all this stuff, put in some olive oil and let the oil get hot. Add the carrots, celery, jalapenos and onion and season with salt and pepper.
Add some chili powder and the salsa and then some chicken broth.

Put beans in and bring to a simmer. Simmer until the beans get soft. This can take at least 2 hours but you can skip the beans if you don’t have much time or use canned beans if you have them. Add the juice from the limes.

Add the chicken, lunch meats and potatoes after the beans are soft. If you are using canned beans, add the meats and potatoes with the beans and let everything simmer for about 20 minutes.

Add a handful of past but not to much or it will soak up all the stock. Continue simmering until the pasta is done to your liking, about 10 minutes.

Serve in bowls with crumbled bacon and crispy wonton strips on top

Is this a "real" recipe? Well, probably not, but it is real cooking. It’s finding a use for what I have and putting those ingredients together in an appetizing way. Plus, my fridge is now ready for my turkey and big old ham!

Post-Thanksgiving Soup

The clean-out-the-fridge-after-Thanksgiving soup is even easier. You can make Turkey Chili, or you can stick with soup. If your fridge looks like my fridge after the holidays, there will be:

Turkey - Ham - Peas - Mashed potatoes - Carrots - Roasted sweet potatoes
Stuffing - Green beans - Cranberry sauce

First and foremost, you’ll want to make some stock out of the turkey carcass - that will free up a lot of space. Make a minimalist stock - by just covering it with cold water, adding some salt and peppercorns and letting it simmer for a few hours while you do other things. Once you’ve got your stock, the rest is easy.

(more…)

This Spicy Corn Chowder recipe is from Jeffrey Spear, a “marketing guru…working with manufacturers of food, beverage and other lifestyle products” and was published in the cookbook Yum! Tasty Recipes From Culinary Greats.

Yum is collection of over 100 great recipes from chefs, restaurateurs, cookbook writers and culinary marketers sharing some of their favorite recipes. This collaboration was put together by Microplane, the manufacturer of some of my favorite culinary tools that you may be familiar with and who are donating 100% of its profits from the sale of the book to the National Kidney Foundation (www.kidney.org).

Yum is available at Amazon.com

Some of the writers may be familiar to you including Rick Bayless, Sara Moulton, Susanna Foo, Gael Greene and Charlie Trotter and then there are some like the author of this recipe who may be new to you.

I was fortunate to receive this cookbook from Kimberly Goldstein who works for the publisher Cumberland House located in Nashville, Tennessee and specializes in, among other things, cookbooks. Thank you Kim for sending Yum to me and I can’t wait to try these great looking recipes and sharing some with my readers.

Spicy Corn Chowder
By Jeffrey Spear & Serves 4

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1 large onion, grated coarsely
1 tablespoon All-Purpose flour
4 cups chicken stock or vegetable stock
2 – 3 large red potatoes, peeled & cut into ½ inch dice
4 cups corn (fresh or frozen)
1 ½ cups whole milk
Salt & pepper to taste
Tabasco, to taste
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives

How to Make Spice Corn Chowder

In a large pot, heat oil and melt butter. Add the onion and sauté until soft, not brown. Add flour and stir for 1-2 minutes until smooth. Add the stock gradually, being sure to stir constantly to incorporate the flour. Add the potatoes and corn. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove from heat.

Transfer half of the soup to a separate bowl. Ladle this soup, a little at a time, into a blender. Puree until creamy smooth. You can return the soup puree from the blender back into the pot as you go. When done, add milk, salt, pepper and Tabasco to taste. Adjust the spiciness of the soup with the Tabasco. Return to heat, bring to a desired temperature and serve. Garnish with chives.

Jeffrey notes: you can also use an immersion blender right in the pot, taking care not to puree all of the solids. The soup won’t be quite as smooth and creamy but much faster to make. Less dishes to wash as well.