My father was a dyed-in-the-shorts Bermudian who loved to feast on all
things from under the sea. Shrimp, crab, oysters, mussels, fish of all
kinds, and lobsters. Five years of serving in the Canadian Army
overseas in Holland and France during World War ll chewing on K rations
in a trench didn’t diminish his early island jones for a crustacean or
almost anything seaworthy and edible.
Relocating to the Toronto suburbs in Canada in the late Forties where seafood restaurants were almost as scarce as mermaid sightings still didn’t discourage his quest for a taste of the ocean. He did his best to pass his glorious seafood cravings on to his children, but as a toddler, I balked at the thought of sliding one of those grey slimy, pulsating mollusks down my tender young throat no matter how much tangy cocktail sauce was dumped on it. I cringed at the thought of cracking open a giant scarlet claw to scoop the steaming white meat dripping with warm clarified butter and lemon.
My father was a dyed-in-the-shorts Bermudian who loved to feast on all things from under the sea. Shrimp, crab, oysters, mussels, fish of all kinds, and lobsters. Five years of serving in the Canadian Army overseas in Holland and France during World War ll chewing on K rations in a trench didn’t diminish his early island jones for a crustacean or almost anything seaworthy and edible.
Relocating to the Toronto suburbs in Canada in the late Forties where seafood restaurants were almost as scarce as mermaid sightings still didn’t discourage his quest for a taste of the ocean. He did his best to pass his glorious seafood cravings on to his children, but as a toddler, I balked at the thought of sliding one of those grey slimy, pulsating mollusks down my tender young throat no matter how much tangy cocktail sauce was dumped on it. I cringed at the thought of cracking open a giant scarlet claw to scoop the steaming white meat dripping with warm clarified butter and lemon.
A lobster dinner with all the trimmings served in an upscale restaurant downtown was a horrible prospect that I endured one Saturday evening each month in deference to my father’s love affair with seafood. Mercifully, he discovered a seafood place that served up his favorite food buffet style. At least there was a benign ‘Turf station offered for land-lubbering kids with an inordinate fear of lobsters, like me.
I was the youngest of four healthy, normally active children in my family and never once did any of us bounce up and down on the banquette, run around amongst the tables, or stage a temper tantrum on the floor. My mother could stop that nonsense with a Death Star look before you had a chance to consider it, but even her stern glare and promise of swift corporal punishment couldn’t stop me from leaping from the table in frightful protest at the sight of the waiter carrying in a 5lb behemoth on a white porcelain platter surrounded by half lemons and mounds of parsley. It’s claws raised high toward the ceiling seemed particularly menacing as the lobster was set down in front of my father in all it’s hoary glory. I could never bear to even look at the thing, let alone watch my father, with a ridiculous plastic bib around his neck, tear it apart limb from limb. From my adolescent point of view, the red roe was an especially disgusting mass of goo and it was beyond my comprehension that many diners found it a gourmet delicacy.
The thick tempered glass of the restaurant lobster tank always provided some small measure of protection for me as I sat in the dimly lit dining room and at the end of the meal, I could always count on the inevitable retreat to the calming safety of my lobsterless home. That comfort was shattered one day when my father brought home four of the live creatures in an effort to create his own personal Maine seafood feast. My diabolical older brother, recognizing and seizing upon an opportunity for free sibling torture and entertainment, dragged me vigorously protesting my fear and revulsion at each step into the kitchen to watch the culinary proceedings.
A huge stockpot of water was boiling rapidly on the stove, sending cascades of steam up to the ceiling, frizzing my hair to Billy Preston proportions in the process. Reaching into a rectangular box festooned with pictures of happy, frolicking lobsters apparently ready and willing to be boiled for dinner, my father grabbed one particularly large specimen around its mid-section and held it up with glee, obliging it to writhe frantically in the air. “Watch this!” he called out happily. “There’s nothing like fresh lobster cooked to order in your own home. And we don’t even have to dress up!”
Dropping it into the roiling cauldron with unseemly relish, he stepped back quickly, well satisfied with his handiwork. Instantly a sound erupted from that pot that curdled my blood. High-pitched squealing sonics held on for long seconds, and then mercifully died. I will forever prefer the silence of the lambs to the screams of those very vocal lobsters.
As I grew older, I managed to avoid ordering most crustaceans in a culinary setting, with the exception of shrimp (shelled by the fish monger, and without their tails to remind me of their original state) and baked Clams Casino (covered with toasted cheesy breadcrumbs and Italian parsley thereby obliterating their raw gelatinous beginnings) until vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard where the daily sight of battered family run lobster boats docking at the pier and plying their fresh catch of the day to the locals and attending clam bakes after a leisurely afternoon digging for them in the shallows of the beach, is commonplace.
In the summer of 1980, my father, despairing of my stubborn determination to shun the King of the Sea, shamelessly used parental birthday guilt, declaring that it was his fondest wish that I attend his celebration dinner at his vacation home in Edgartown. Striking a low blow, he swore that the only gift he wanted was to live to see me sample an authentic East Coast lobster. In the face of such a request from an aging parent, I reluctantly agreed.
After spending many of his holiday afternoons with local lobstermen, my father now had a new technique to unveil. Ignoring my life-long misgivings, he demonstrated the proper way to give the beasts a merciful end. Placing lobsters in a pot of room temperature, generously salted water and then slowly bringing it to a boil is apparently I was assured, relatively merciful and kind. My father considered it a genuinely humane act of culinary skill.
According to local lore, the lobsters fall asleep as the water gradually heats up and drift into peaceful and painless oblivion before their shells, the actual origin of the screaming noise when rudely thrown into boiling water, begin shrieking in shrill protest and understandably upsetting potential sensitive diners.
Once the lobsters had been mercifully slept to death, it was time for the true challenge: eating the damn things. Unable to vanquish the life-long horror for those vicious claws, I opted for the tail. Gingerly, at the encouraging prompting of my father, I first dipped the morsel in the warm clarified butter, then squeezed on a little lemon for good measure as I had seen my father do so many times before. Closing my eyes, and metaphorically holding my nose, I popped it in my mouth fully expecting to chew on something vile. Instead, it was, delicious! Hot and subtle, delicate and tasting fresh from the sea, I finally understood why my father chased after such fare for so long. Abashed at having been such a baby for so many years I said, “Okay, now I feel stupid. I’ll have the claw.”
I have since developed a hard-won worldly taste for lobster and now enjoy it immensely in many forms, and years later when settled in LA, I even became a founding member of the Lobster Club at Hymie’s Seafood Restaurant, where every few weeks, a small coterie of lunatic show business friends gathered together in the back room, ordered copious amounts of champagne and cocktails and dined on lobsters chosen from their ubiquitous gloomy tank. I’ve never been able to cloak myself in the mantle of Mother Theresa and convince myself that I’m performing a merciful act by tossing a live and kicking lobster into a tepid pot of water for a good old-fashioned lobster feast, but a lesson my father taught me that Day of the Infamous Lobster Boil has stood me in good stead; I am a master at making excellent clarified butter, all the better infused with a little garlic and roasted lemon; the intrepid lobster’s boon companion.
Clarified Butter with Garlic and Roasted Lemon
1 Lb. Butter
3 Garlic Cloves crushed (more or less can be used to personal taste)
1 Lemon Sliced
1 Tbspn Olive Oil
½ Tsp Kosher salt
Preheat the oven to 400° F
Place the lemon slices on a cookie sheet and drizzle with Olive Oil and sprinkle with Kosher Salt
Roast in the oven for 45 minutes
In a small saucepan, melt the Butter slowly over Medium Low Heat.
Add the crushed garlic cloves.
When foaming subsides and butter is completely melted, remove from heat. Using a gravy ladle or a soupspoon, carefully skim milk solids from the top of the oil.
Add the Roasted Lemon slices and juice from the pan. Stir to mix.
Set aside to cool to room temperature and allow garlic and lemon to infuse into the butter.
Strain butter mixture through a small fine sieve or piece of cheesecloth. *
*Chilling the butter in the refrigerator until the milk solids rise and harden on the surface and then removing the crust by skimming it with a shallow spoon is a handy trick if cheesecloth or a fine sieve isn’t available.
Can be served at room temperature or re-warmed in a saucepan.
Lynne Scott has performed as a back-up singer for Stevie Wonder, the Blues Brothers, etc., produced jazz albums, models, and occasionally caters dinner parties and events as a private chef in New York and L.A.