A penultimate feast of Neptunian proportion.

Last night was a seafood feast and six recipes in one sitting.

Shell-Roasted Scallops the Old-School French Way
Shell-Roasted Scallops with Sweet Tomato & Basil Sauce
Shell-Roasted Scallops with Ginger, Soy and Coriander
How to Steam a Lobster
How to Grill a Lobster
Baked John Dory in the Bag with Tomatoes and Balsamic Vinegar

The day began with a trip to the fish markets to pick me up some feast-worthy seafood. A lobster, hand-picked (not literally by my hand!) from the tank, a whole Snapper (they had sold out of John Dory) and scallops (still in their shells). Luckily, I had Evans with me (she was my side-kick and sous-chef for the day, as well as a guest at the dinner table that night), coz she reassured me that she was going to be there to back me up while I killed the lobster. See, I wavered a little at the tank. The very friendly and slightly amused lady at the fish markets wanted to check that I was sure I wanted to kill Lobby myself, coz she was happy to do it there for me. I looked at Evans, I hesitated slightly, she reassured me and then I was back on task. Yes, I was sure I wanted to (and could) do it myself. About 27% sure. But still sure. A little less sure when she handed him over in a bag. Hello! A bag? No box? He can claw his way right out of a bag. But OK.

I asked the fish market lady about handling and when I got him home I held him by his antennas (poking out of the bag) and carefully put him on the top shelf of my freezer. He’d been pretty agreeable up to this point and fair play to him, apart from a bit of a jerk against the cold, I think he was resigned to his fate and he didn’t really struggle as I closed the door on his cold new world.

An hour or so later and I opened the freezer door to a very dopey and unresponsive lobster. Now for the hard part.


So there we were, me with knife in hand, Evans with camera at the ready and Lobby with the end in sight.

I’d read the “how to kill a lobster” page in Jamie and watched Peter Kuruvita (head chef at Flying Fish) on MasterChef, teaching the M-Cheffers how to do it, so I took the bull by the horns and I stabbed that bad boy. Straight through. Then I spun him round and I sliced him straight down the middle. OK, so I make it sound easy. Perhaps it wasn’t quite as easy as that, but it certainly wasn’t as tricky as I’d thought it would be.

The next thing to prepare was the snapper. He was being baked in a big foil pocket with a delicious tomato marinade. The marinade was sliced tomatoes and onion, whole basil leaves, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and S&P. I piled the tomato mixture onto the foil, then sat the snapper on top.

Then I folded him up into a tight little pocket-bundle.

And put him in the fridge til we were ready to go.

At this point, Evans put down the camera and stepped into the kitchen as sous-chef, so we could get started on the scallops. Evans took charge of the Sweet Tomato & Basil Sauce version and created a paste of tomato, basil, sugar, balsamic & butter. She was nervous about the way it looked – not like the picture – but I told her to trust Jamie and just go with it. I reassured her that after a year together, I’ve learnt that sometimes Jamie just knows. While Evans worked on that – sitting the scallops on the tomato mix, then some prosciutto on top of that – I made the garlic and parsley butter for the Old-School French version – sitting the scallops on finely chopped spinach, then the butter on top – and the ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil & coriander sauce dolloped on top for the Asian style. We lay all these very good-looking creations on a tray of salt (to stop the shells from slipping about) and popped them in the oven for 12 minutes.

The scallop entrees were a hit and we all had our favourite, which turned out to be (majority) the Sweet Tomato & Basil Sauce. See Evans! I told you Jamie knows best!

Next course lobster. Much excitement.

Now that I can safely say the scariest part of buying and killing a live lobster is the cost, I feel justified in telling you that I was only using half a lobster for each of the lobster recipes, rather than buying two.

So one half was to be steamed and one half to be grilled.

For the steamed half, I sprinkled him with S&P and lemon rind then some butter dots.

I might add that at this point, my neighbours might have wondered about the screams coming from my apartment. You see, he was moving. Lobby was making one last dash for freedom. Or speaking in morse-lobster-code to his other half. Whatever the case, I was fascinated, Evans was slightly disgusted, Gem was a little freaked and Stu was amused. How can a lobster that’s been frozen almost to death, then stabbed to death, cut in half, refrigerated for a few hours (in two halves!) and seasoned & marinated still have the ability to move his tail. And I promise you, we weren’t imagining it. He could have swum in my bath with the amount of flipping that was going on. He he. Still makes me laugh. In a creeped out funny ha-ha way.

Back to the steaming. To create a steamer (which I now realise I could have done in a much simpler way, but whatever!), I sat a cake tin upside-down in a pot of boiling water and sat the plate with the lobster on top, then the lid. The water continued to simmer and steam the lobster. It did make a totally bizarre and slightly underwater-like sound of deep bubbling for the 15 minutes of simmering, which added to the hilarity of the not-quite-lifeless lobster situation! But check out how good it looked when we lifted the lid!

For the grilled lobster, I left Stu in charge out at the BBQ. He got the grill nice and hot, then placed the seasoned Lobby half, flesh side down for five minutes. Then we turned him up the right way for a second, so Gem could sprinkle him with chilli and garlic, then he went face down again for another five minutes. Unfortunately at this point, we had a small disaster involving chilli fingers and Gem’s eye.

At least she was still smiling, even if she was virtually blind in one eye. She couldn’t even see how good the lobster was looking when Stu turned him right-way-up again for the last few minutes of grill time.

At last we were ready to go with the Jamie/Lizzo Seafood Feast – two sexy looking lobster halves and a cooked in a pocket Snapper.

As fantastic as the fish was – and it really was, with the sweet & sour tomato, onion, basil sauce, and the perfectly steamed and falling off the bone meat – my favourite was the chargrilled lobster. I think I could taste the pain (Gem’s not Lobby’s!!) that went into it, which made me appreciate it even more! Seriously though, they were both quite amazing. The steamed half was juicy and flavoursome, the grilled half was sweet and smokey. And I think this picture really sums it up.

There was not a single piece of flesh left on that lobster. The fact that I whipped out the pliers from my tool box, to give us extra leverage, sure helped.

So there we were. Stuffed full at the end of an age of seafood feasting. And the penultimate meal in the Jamie experiment.

I have to thank my gorgeous friends for giving up their Saturday night for 7 hours of cooking and eating in my small apartment. I appreciate their full stomachs and the injuries endured… And especially Evans who worked tirelessly to back me up all day – at the markets and in the kitchen. Thank you Miss E.

And now here I am, with just one recipe to go!

Xx

PS – I suppose I should tell you now, that even though I am at the end of this year (well, 10 months!) of cooking with Jamie, this is not the end for my kitchen experiments. I have a plan. I am going on holiday next week (not specifically to recover from AYIMK, but it is quite lovely timing!) and when I return, I plan to start something new. In order to keep up the culinary challenge, I will cook one recipe each week, from a different cookbook each week, until I work my way through all my cookbooks. Not obviously to finish every cookbook (good lord, that would probably kill me!), but so I have at least cooked one thing from all the cookbooks I own (of which there are many – four full shelves!).

PPS – So please consider this an invitation to stick with me. I have loved your support along the way and hope that you have loved following my kitchen exploits.

PPS – One to go!