Lobster, looking to step it up with parts!

[brittonv]

Greetings all,

I came in to position of 3 beautiful Florida Spiny Lobsters today. 2 girls and one boy.

I started getting them ready for a good broil when I thought about it and it's time to step up my lobster game.

I have cleaned many lobsters and from my understanding:

- The green stuff is the tommalli or liver. Very tasty but it can be a souce of concentrated toxins. So I am going to avoid it.

- From the boy lobster I got the strange, firm white parts, that for some reason has always creeped me out. I don't know that I want to do anything with that.

- The red/pink stuff is the coral or Roe from the 2 girl lobsters. Can anyone point me in the direction of a good sauce I can use these for? Or if there is a another good use for them in general.

Am I being silly by not using the other parts? I am going to be feeding it to my 2 small children as well and I always error on the side of caution when it comes to them.

[Fat Guy]

With most of these toxins the issue is dosage. Are you eating the green stuff every day, or once a year? I wouldn't worry about the latter.

My favorite use for the roe is a compound butter. Spread the roe on a piece of aluminum foil and cook it in the toaster oven until it's dried out. Then mix that with butter. You can then use the butter to make amazing sauces.

[edsel]

Lobster-roe compound butter sounds awesome.

Jean-louis palladin had a procedure for drying lobster roe to use as a garnish. I don't know whether this is a classical technique or something he came up with. You par-cook the roe wrapped in plastic wrap in simmering water for a few minutes until it turns red. Then chill, break it into small bits, and spread it on parchment. Into a 400 ℉ oven, toast for 15 minutes, break up clumps, toast another 15 minutes, then cool. Force the cooled roe through a fine sieve to make beautiful little "rubies" of roe. Nice.

(Also agree about the tomalley not being deadly if you don't eat it often.)

[djyee100]

I would also suggest making lobster stock from the shells, the skinny little legs, and the bodies. I've never made lobster stock, but I'm about to, since somebody gave me a big bag of shells and bodies recently. (The bag's in my freezer.) I've been told to make the stock like fish fumet, but cook it longer, about an hour, since the flavor is more difficult to extract from shells rather than fish bones.

Or you could make lobster butter. Here's a recipe from James Peterson's Cooking, available on Googlebooks (page 351):

Crustacean Butter