This is one of my favorite dishes, lobster Fra Diavlo. First, let me say that the dinner cost about $30.00 for two people. So we have a 1 and a quarter to 1 ½ pound lobster; we have a dozen mussels. Oh, this one is open, so we’re going to discard that one. And we have a dozen middle sized clamps, four large shrimps, onion, anchovy rolled with a caper with each one. We’re going to use like four of those. Fresh garlic cloves, fresh parsley and crushed tomatoes with basil, I’ll give you the amounts of everything later; virgin olive oil, that’s it. If you like tomato, and you like sea food, there’s no better sauce than this one.
The first thing to do is the most humane way to kill a lobster, turn around and go straight down with a knife right there. We’ll split on the half. That’s the hardest job. The first thing to do is put a quarter of cup of olive oil in the skillet, high flame. Now, let’s add the anchovies, you see those are the rolled anchovies, I brought them this way, because I want to a few capers and I didn’t want to buy caper separate, so I got both of them in one can. And we add four anchovies, and these will move out right into the olive oil and that’s just about done.
Low the flame to medium then add the onions an the garlic. Slice the garlic, why? Sometimes I like the flavors in there in the garlic and then a bite into a piece of garlic, that’s even more pleasurable. We’re going to cook this for a couple of minutes. Let’s get the onions off. And before we add the lobster, what I do is I remove the eye socket. That’s really not edible. Everything else here is, we cut the rubber band. We have clamps in there, we don’t need an rubber. Now, that’s pretty good.
This dish is a very simple dish. Once that’s done, that’s soft enough. We’re putting a little sea salt, just a little bit in the lobster. Put them in flesh side down, same thing on the other half and the coral here. This is full of flavor maybe someday I will show you how to make stuffed lobster with crab meat. And just break the claw off; let me cook that up, separating it from the body. Now, we’re going to add the clamps, the mussels, but not the one I found open.
We’re going to add some dry white wine. Let’s say we’ll use a half a cup. It sounds good to me. Save the shrimps for later, you out them in now, they will be overcooked. That’s the failure that most cooks do. Now, we’ll just add the tomato, crash the tomato in your can, cover it. And I’ll let you know how long that it takes. Well, you know how long it takes; now raise the flame, there’s a lot of liquid in there. Raise the flame to high; we want those clams and mussels to open. They’ll give off those delicious juices which flavor the sauce and everything together. You can actually throw the meat in the garbage and just put the sauce on pasta, it’s phenomenal.
Cut the shrimps down the back like this, a nice better appearance. The only time you don’t do this is when you’re making a shrimp cocktail. Now, it looks like about four minutes, in a high flame, let’s roll it to halfway. I’m going to add this time, chopped parsley cross cut, a quarter of a cut. The flavors, and then I’m going to add some dry basil, only because I don’t have some fresh right now and oregano, just a little bit of each, I’ll let you know how much. Also, I want to add half of a teaspoon of black pepper, one teaspoon of dried basil, and one teaspoon of dry oregano.
See, I don’t use tomato paste, I made a puree. I don’t like the heaviness of the tomato. And the consistency of this sauce would be perfect with the pasta of your choice. I will be using a full wheat pasta, to serve with this tonight, because we’re watching Cars. Let that simmer, and the seafood is salty because it’s from the ocean, so we have to adjust the salt, maybe we don’t put any later.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services