Lobster At Home
by Jasper White
Publisher: Scribner
ISBN: 3058489
One of New England's most acclaimed chefs, Jasper White, has a new cookbook out, and if you're a lover of lobster, you're sure to find it a real page turner. In Lobster at Home,this Culinary Institute of America-trained chef and restauranteur demystifies New England's best-loved crustacean, making lobster accessible for those who want to bring the clawed creatures home for cooking.
The cookbook opens with a "Lobster Primer," a basic overview of everything from lobster fishing to buying lobsters to selecting the best specimens--White says he looks for lobsters with a "lively disposition"!He also includes a circular chart called "The Lobster Year" that pinpoints month by month variations in lobster quality and price so that you'll know when the best times are to include lobster on your homecooking menu. By the time you reach the end of Chapter One, you may know more about lobsters than you'd ever imagined--including separating the "boys from the girls" (only of major importance if a recipe calls for roe, a.k.a. lobster eggs), all of the lobster "parts," and how to transport and store lobsters.
In Chapter Two, White delves into basic cooking techniques--grilling, boiling, steaming, and microwaving. Step-by-step instructions take themystery out of working with live lobsters. There's also a great section on "How to Eat a Whole Lobster (Like a Yankee, not a Tourist!)," inwhich White reminds readers, "Eating lobster is, above all, a sensual experience."
Eight pages of color photos will whet your appetite, and there's even a bonus chapter that features lobster recipes from other great chefs, including Edward Brown of The Sea Grill at New York's Rockefeller Center,one of America's foremost seafood chefs (Bouillabaisse); Gerald Clare of The Belmont in Camden, Maine (Lobster Pad Thai); Larry Forgione of New York City's An American Place, The Grill Room and Rhinebeck, New York's The Beekman 1766 Tavern (Lobster & Wild Rice Risotto); and TV Food Network favorite and restaurateur Emeril Lagasse (Emeril's Portuguese Lobster.)
Author Jasper White rose to prominence in the early 1980s as a chef at Season's Restaurant in Boston. In 1983, he opened Jasper's on Boston's waterfront with his wife, Nancy. He made Food & Wine's honor roll in 1983 and Cook's Who's Who in 1984, and Jasper's was named "BestRestaurant in Boston" by Boston Magazine for eleven of the twelve years it was operated by the Whites. Chef White was also the 1991 winner of the James Beard Best Chef in the Northeast Award. Currently, he lives in Lincoln, Massachusetts, and serves as consulting chef to Legal Sea Foodsin Boston.
Kimberly Knox, your Guide for New England for Visitors