The Lobster Souffle Project

[Bond Girl]

As I was flipping through the December issue of Vogue last night, I came across an article on Lobster Souffle by Jeffrey Steingarten. The piece talked about two different lobster souffle recipes that supposedly reminded Steingarten the one he had as a teenager in Paris, that had set him on the course of gastronomic discovery. One of them involved taking the souffle mixture from Jacque Pepin's Complete Technique and the Lobster preparation from Julia Child's Cooking with Master Chef and the sauce from either and putting it together. The other was developed between Steingarten and Didier Elena (executive chef of Alain Ducasse), which you have to send away for the recipe.

The whole venture supposedly takes about 10 hours. Has anyone ever tried this? The dish sounds fascinating and I would would be willing to give it a shot on some weekends but as I don't have either books from Julia Child or Jacque Pepin, I have no idea what he was talking about.

I've sent away for the recipes and is stiill waiting but anyone else who wants to try it and compare notes with me can send an email to lobstersouffle@earthlink.net.

source: vogue article December issue

[gsquared]

I am in! Sent off the email - please post when/if you get a reply.

[alacarte]

Kind of ironic to read this post after reading mamster's Julia Child interview -- in which she talks about microwaving lobster.

Rather a change from your 10-hour marathon project (which I'm looking forward to hearing more about!)

[Bond Girl]

I would also like to try the Julia/Pepin one as well, does anyone have these two books?

[jogoode]

Have you tried this yet?! You have to ask or tell Steingarten about this during next week's Q&A.

[SethG]

Sorry for the delayed response, but yeah, I'd like to try this too! I don't have the Vogue issue in question, but I can pick it up. I have Complete Techniques, and I can PM/email you what it says. I don't have the Julia book mentioned.

[gsquared]

Anyone got a reply yet?

[gsquared]

Sent the mail again and got the recipe back.

[Bond Girl]

Yep I got it now. Anyone wants it please let me know. I am going to try this next week.

[MisterMax]

We made the souffle for our New Year's Eve celebration. It did take 10 hours - or more. My wife made the souffle; I did the lobster and the sauce.

Steingarten's recipe isn't clearly written, taking several rereadings to understand. It has some errors, like calling for tomatoes that aren't used, and some fussiness, like forbidding you from cutting the lobster tails in one step and then telling you to cut them a few steps later. My wife is an experienced souffle maker; she says Steingarten isn't detailed enough for a novice.

The recipe had me killing and dismembering the lobsters with a knife, rather than with heat, which is an experience. An anatomy lesson from the dissection of a still-twitching being. Did you know that the coral (roe) is a bright cooked-spinach green before cooking turns it a bright coral color? Or what uncooked tomalley looks like? Next time I'll use a cleaver and hand-protection; my palms got several cuts from the rough shell.

Will there be a next time? I think so; it would go much faster and I would correct my mistakes and Steingarten's too. Now I know that steaming the lobster for 10 minutes is quite enough; the tail doesn't toughen nearly as much. And we know that 20 minutes cooking the souffle would have been plenty. And that I probably should not have diluted the lobster jus with chicken broth.

Was the lobster souffle any good? Yes yes yes!

- Max

[Bond Girl]

Thanks Max! I just goot a loobster today and will attempted over the weekend. Will report back.

[laurel]

I tried making the lobster souffle (using the recipe I, the Child/Pepin one) for Friday's dinner (started on Wednesday). The killing of the lobsters was definitely an experience... I'll definitely need to get a big cleaver before trying something similar again, and I was surprised that the half lobsters crawled around for a few minutes...

I didn't have any chicken stock, but I did have good homemade vegetable stock, so I used that instead. I did add the mystery tomatoes at the same time as the tomato paste, and I think the jus turned out pretty well.

In all, it took me about 3 hours to prepare the jus and the lobsters (the first step), then another 2 hours for the souffle and final steps (including the baking time, and while preparing oher stuff for dinner), so it was quite time consuming,

Overall, I think the results were pretty good. My test subjects seemed to enjoy it (especially since they got pretty large portions, since I was expecting 8 for dinner, and it turned out to be 6 including 2 vegetarians), which they better have, since this is probably the most expensive dinners I've ever cooked :)

There was quite a bit of sauce left over. I think I'll call it lobster bisque so I can eat it straight for lunch :)

[laurel]

Photographic documentation:

Killing the Lobster:

Lobster Scraps:

Simmering the Stock:

Reducing Lobster Jus:

Lobster Souffle:

[Bond Girl]

Thanks for the post Laurel. Great pictures too! This will definitely help tomorrow.

[Bond Girl]

Finally completed the Lobster souffle in three days. I didn't have the heart to kill the lobster so I ended up partially steaming it and then chopping it up to make the lobster jus. I tried both the recipes, and found the Julia Child/Jacque Pepin easer to work with. It was a lot easier than I anticipated, once the jus is done. And, the end result was as good as I expected. Would I make it again in the near future? Probably not, unless I have a large dinner party planned. However, the lobster jus I had left over was priceless. I used it to make a nice bisque with a bit of Tamarind, Ginger and Cayenne the next day, which made the whole venture all the more worthwile.

[Richard Kilgore]

Thanks for posting your adventures with Mr. Lobster. Yoo-Rang -- Can you get the recipe into the archive?

[Bond Girl]

Done.

[Richard Kilgore]

Thanks!