Maine Lobster Salad with Chef Andrew Masciangelo

Divya Gugnani: Hi, I’m Divya Gugnani and welcome to Savona and Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania, where world class cuisine is met with the largest wine list in the State of Pennsylvania. Nut today, we’re all about lobster. So let’s go behind the burner and meet the chef. I’m here with Executive Chef Andrew Masciangelo. Andrew, there’s a beautiful lobster in front of me. What are you going to do to it? Andrew Masciangelo: We’re going to make a lobster salad today with some avocado, pureed lemon and some micro greens. So I’m going to start off byb cooking our lobster Divya Gugnani: Wow, that’s live and moving Andrew Masciangelo: Yeah, we want to pick the liveliest lobster you can, the one that’s running around a lot Divya Gugnani: So the tips are lively, fresh and hard shell and that’s the one that you picked Andrew Masciangelo: We made the court-bouillon, it’s basically vegetable stock with some acid added, you can use white wine, you can use white vinegar, lemons, oranges, whatever you really want to flavor it with Divya Gugnani: And so you don’t have the time to make the court-bouillon, you could just use boiling water or could just (----) Andrew Masciangelo: Yeah you could throw in a couple like aromatics, like thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns, you know. So I’m just going to put the lobster into the water for about 5 minutes. Now a lot of people when they pull it out of the water, they like to go in the cold water, they cool it down quickly; but I found that the albumin or the white stuff that comes out of the lobster hardens then to the meat and then it’s hard to get it off. If you just let it cool on a tray like this, you can just rinse it under water and it rubs right off of the lobster. To break down the lobster, it’s really easy, just have to separate the knuckle from the body there, twist the tail off, it comes out really easy, you can set the head aside; you could use that to make the stock. For the tail, you just want to put it in the palm of your hand like this and squeeze so you hear it crack, then you can turn it over, and just Divya Gugnani: And just pull that out like you’re taking a big piece of shrimp bone Andrew Masciangelo: Exactly, just peel it right out of this fellow like that. Divya Gugnani: So how do you prevent it from over cooking? Andrew Masciangelo: We cook it for 5 minutes and let them cool, and I also don’t have the water like boiling, I have it at a low simmer, kind of little slower, okay. For the knuckles, you just snap that off right like that and then take a pair of scissors and you make it snip down here it’s really hard to get the meat out of this part, so we’re just going to set that aside. Make an incision with the scissors down each side Divya Gugnani: It looks good I want to try it. It has such a beautiful flavor because of the aromatics Andrew Masciangelo: For the claw, you want to shake out the water so you don’t get water all over yourself. I like to wiggle the bottom claw around like this, trying to get it loose from the shell Divya Gugnani: and we’re two to season (----) Andrew Masciangelo: And then I go one way and the other way like this, and then back, and then forward, and then you want to pinch on right here, see if you can pull out this. If you don’t get this out, this is a good tip, just take a pair of like hobby pliers and you can have to go in after that because nobody wants to bite into that. To finish taking the lobster out of or the claw out of that shell, you want to use the back end of your knife so not to dole or chip your knife. And we’re just going to go in a little bit like that and then turn your knife like that, and it pops right out, and then you can pull the claw right out of the shell like that. Divya Gugnani: Look at that piece! This is mastery Andrew Masciangelo: We have to clean out the tail here so we’re just going to slice it in half length twice, then you want to open it up and you can rinse this under some cold water. And this is the vein like the shrimp has the vein; you want to pull that out. This would be 2 salads here with two knuckles half a lobster per salad Divya Gugnani: That means you get to have one and just give it to me you ain’t want Andrew Masciangelo: There you go. And now it’s time for the avocado. When you’re taking a avocado or taking the meat out of the avocado, take your knife, go down to the pit in the middle, and then we’re just going to go around in a circle like this. Twist it and then you have the seed here, now you want to take your knife like this, give it a quick turn like that and it comes right out. Divya Gugnani: So how do you know when an avocado is ripe? Andrew Masciangelo: How green it is, how firm it feels, it’s really hard. See you know that it’s not going to be ready yet, you want to wait until it’s a consistent like that, darker brown like this, as opposed to this green avocado here. A quick trick on how to ripen an avocado, it’s just putting it in a paper bag, and Divya Gugnani: I see that with mangoes Andrew Masciangelo: Exactly, you can do that with lots of fruit; bananas, mangoes Divya Gugnani: Yeah, it does wonders on them, they get ripe right away and you just leave them out(---) Andrew Masciangelo: Exactly. To take the avocado out you just want to slide your spoon in like so, just scoop it out like that, if you have some brown spots you just want to take them off Divya Gugnani: So what’s the trick for keeping that completely green and not having it turn brown right away? Andrew Masciangelo: For the avocado mousse here, take a blender, we put the avocado in like this, we take a lemon and squeeze fresh lemon juice in it, season it with salt and pepper and puree it. And after you do that when you take it out you want to keep it in an airtight container, and it actually stays nicer longer if you put the like plastic wrap directly on top of the avocado. I always like to have cured lemon you know, around of my kitchen. Basically, you just want to quarter lemons, you can equal mixtures of salt and sugar, I use kosher salt, and then you just want to Divya Gugnani: I like the texture of the kosher salt when you’re curing Andrew Masciangelo: Yeah, you just want to toss this around to make sure the lemons are covered. We’re just going to dump this into the airtight container, shake it around, close it up and we’re going to put it in a cool place like if you have a basement Divya Gugnani: Cool, dry place away from sunlight Andrew Masciangelo: And we’re just going to leave this down there for a month then you can check on it and we’ll see how it comes out. I had some cured lemon zest here; we just took the rind off of the cured lemon and just chiffonade or julienne the lemon up. We’re going to quickly slice some radish, I’m using a Mandolin here, it’s easier and faster than a knife, more consistent cuts Divya Gugnani: Yeah, thin, even cuts but watch out for your fingers Andrew Masciangelo: Exactly Divya Gugnani: Because it can be very dangerous at home Andrew Masciangelo: We’re going to drizzle some olive oil on our lobster here, a little bit of salt Divya Gugnani: And why white pepper, cause you don’t want those black spots? Yeah Andrew Masciangelo: For visual, exactly, I don’t want the blacks on. We’re going to squeeze a little fresh lemon juice on, after you clean it you usually put it in the refrigerator so when you’re ready to plate it, I just quickly throw it in the oven. We don’t want to cook it anymore; we just want to warm it up. We’re going to take some micro greens, a little baby lettuce, we’re going to squeeze a little fresh lemon juice on, take some of the radishes, a little olive oil again for the radishes, just more lemon juice, a little bit of salt, pepper, toss this around; we’ll just take the radishes here and make an arrangement on the plate here. Little bit of our seasoned micro greens, place that in the middle, our warm lobster, we’re going to do fennel of the avocado mousse, a couple pieces of the cured lemon. I took some lemon grass and some citrus, lemon, lime, orange and made a broth here. We’re just going to take a close, cover up our lobster salad like this and we’re going to take one of our shogun balls, we’re going to put some dry ice and then we’re going to kind of add essence of this lemon grass and citrus to our lobster salad by pointing this warm broth over the dry ice, placing the lobster on top and then, voila! Divya Gugnani: This is a magical dish for sure. Some of lobster heaven, let them dig in, it’s a combination of fruit flavors, and a little bit something deeper than that. Andrew Masciangelo: I think it feels the over senses, you know, the visual with the fog and you can kind of hear the broth sizzling against the dry ice Divya Gugnani: And the broth that really give it that extra layer of flavor and just aroma from the lemon grass, and that kind of Asian flair of the dish Andrew Masciangelo: Right Divya Gugnani: Magical lobster here at Savona. Thanks so much for having us Andrew Masciangelo: Thank you. Divya Gugnani: Stay tuned to Behind the Burner where we give you the tips, tricks and techniques that are lightening the culinary world on fire.