Text 3668, 122 rader
Skriven 2013-08-18 19:04:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av DALE SHIPP
Ärende: lobsters 17
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 ML> Then I'm a little surprised that you encountered enough
 ML> of that resiliency to mention it.
 DS> It was firm enough to notice when we cut it.

Interesting. Of course the textural thing contributes to
why Chinese-style cooking is superior to western-style
as far as large lobsters go.

 DS> the green stuff that I think is tomaley, there was some firm redish
 DS> lumps. Is that the roe?
 ML> Yeah. It was a girl.
 DS> Then I maybe have never had a female lobster before.  In fact, I seem

That's unlikely. A high percentage of lobsters are females,
and by and large it is perfectly legal to harvest them
(but see below). It is more likely that the females you
had were too young to have a substantial amount of roe:
a female chicken lobster will have just a thin strand of
red alongside the anal tract, and if your lobster was
cleaned in any way, it probably went with the vein.

 DS> to recall watching TV shows about lobstermen that claimed that if they
 DS> caught a female, they notched a fin and tossed her back.  Maybe that
 DS> was only in certain areas?

It's an oversimplification, probably not the fault of
either the TV show or the lobstermen; it's just that a
program would lose much of its audience if it spent a
lot of time on fisheries laws and procedures.

When I first heard about the notching procedure and was
told that it let lobstermen tell a female, I thought it a
silly idea, as it's not great shakes to tell the sex via
the method I described before. I was wrong about the silly
idea, but the reasoning handed to me was also wrong.

The custom - mandatory in some places, such as Maine,
optional on the honor system in others, voluntary with
incentives in still others, and unpracticed in others -
is designed to protect the breeding population and goes
under the assumption that as one male can fertilize the
eggs of many females, males are figuratively speaking a
dime a dozen, whereas fertile females are more valuable
as breeding stock than as food.

A female can be proven fertile when she is carrying eggs
(actually embryos) on her underside. The fact that she has
eggs inside doesn't prove anything - if these don't ever
get fertilized, you might as well eat them, and let me
tell you, lobster caviar is way, way more delicious than
fish caviar. A female carrying visible external fertilized
eggs is said to be gravid (technically), berried (in common
speech), or pregnant (I use this term by preference despite
its on-the-face inaccuracy). When a lobsterman picks up one
of these, he must throw it back intact, that's by federal
law and the laws of all the lobstering states. He may or
may not choose to notch the tail - this is mostly a matter
of custom or habit.

The notch is an indicator that the lobster has proven
herself by becoming pregnant and thus is a good citizen
to be protected by law or custom as the case may be. So
in many jurisdictions a notched lobster is supposed to
be thrown back just as though she were currently pregnant,
whether she is or not.

There are several things about notching. In Maine it's
mandatory; in other places it's a mark of good citizenship.
In yet others, lobstermen collect the snipped-out bits of
shell and turn them in to the state, which gives them a
bounty as a consolation for having taken the effort to
catch something that had to be thrown back; I don't see
why an unscrupulous lobsterman can't multiply notch or
even notch males and turn in the bits for cash. Anyhow.

A notch is not a lifetime pass for a lady lobster - it
lasts only two, maybe three molts; after that, it's a
clean slate, er, tail and she has to take her chances
again. So the procedure is meant to limit, not shut down,
the harvesting of females, and it's done pretty well, as
evidenced by the current lobster glut in New England,
where the wholesale price has been driven down to the
$2.50-3.00/lb range and makes it hardly worth a boat trip
out to catch the little monsters. Which brings up another
specter - China, which has recently been paying handsomely
for airlifted seafood for its insatiable masses. But that
is another story for another time and place.

Picada Nut Sauce
cat: sauce, Spanish
yield: 250 mL

40 g skinned hazelnuts and/or almonds, toasted
1/2 ts saffron
2 cloves garlic
2 Marie biscuits (galletas Maria)*
1 sprig parsley
1/8 ts cinnamon
1/4 ts salt
100 ml medium sherry, white wine, or vino rancio
100 ml water
25 g dark chocolate (optional)
a few pine nuts (optional)

Use this sauce in which to cook lobster, monkfish,
rabbit, partridge, or chicken.

In a mortar or blender crush the toasted nuts with
the saffron, garlic, biscuits, parsley, cinnamon,
salt, sherry, and water, adding the chocolate and
pine nuts if desired. Add this to partially cooked
chicken or fish, with more liquid if needed, and
simmer another 10-15 min. Makes a thick sauce.
*Galletas Maria are a plain, not-too-sweet cookie.
Graham crackers or plain bread crumbs could be
substituted.

Tasca Restaurant, Brookline, MA

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