Lobster risotto

It was Ed's birthday last week.  So, I made him a 5-course dinner, and paired as many of the courses as I could with tasty beer.  We started with gougères, and a sliced pear and some chimay.  Can't say no to appetizers like that!  

(I kinda forgot that these guys puff in the oven, so they ended up being pretty huge, rather than tiny little delicate bite-sized morsels.  Oh well, still tasted awesome).

They went poof!  and were cheesy.  These things are so awesome.  Click that link and make some.

Then we had the salad course, which was caramelized pears, toasted walnuts, avocado, arugula, and craisins, in a maple mustard dressing.  That was pretty delicious, too.

The main course, which I served with a Belgian white beer from Unibroue, was a lobster risotto.  Lobster has been wicked cheap around here lately, and it's always delicious, so I decided to try my hand at a lobster risotto.  This was a bit time-consuming, but well worth the effort.  

First, I cooked the lobster.  It was a little guy, just 1.16lb, and I boiled him for 8 minutes.  Once he was cool enough to handle, I pulled the meat out of the shell, and threw the shell back into a pot, with some onions and carrots and bay leaves and the rinds from the gruyère cheese that I'd used up in the gougères, to make a stock.

Once I had a stock, I just set that aside until it was time to make the risotto.

To make the risotto, I started with a diced onion.  In a big wok, I sweated the onion in some olive oil, then added a few cloves of garlic, diced up.  Once that was toasted, in went ~1C of arborio rice.  I turned the heat up to high and kept that moving around for ~1-2min, until it was also toasted, and starting to look translucent.  While all this was happening, I had a pot with half a bottle of cheap white wine (pinot grigio; not ideal, but it was what was on sale) and a pot of the lobster stock warming on the back burners.  Once the rice was toasted, I added the wine, ~1/2C at a time.  I'd add some wine, stir it around until the liquid was gone, add some more.  When the wine was gone, I started in on the lobster stock.

About 10 minutes into the whole process, I threw in the chopped chanterelle mushrooms, and a pinch or two of kosher salt.  Continue to stir over medium-high heat, adding liquid as necessary, until the rice is cooked, another 15 minutes or so.  Then I added in the chopped lobster meat, and some parsley for garnish.

We served the risotto with some roasted brussels sprouts, just tossed in olive oil and kosher salt and roasted at 400F for 15min, because green things are good for you, and, incidentally, delicious.

The risotto was utterly amazing, and delicious.  It always is delicious, but the lobster flavor made it even more delicious.  It may be worth making this again before the lobster season ends.

Dessert was angel food cake topped with fruit in a cardamom lime syrup, but I'll save that for another post.  We also had a cheese board.  And Allagash Interlude, for the final dessert beer.

The cheeses were gruyere, a soft robiola cow/sheep milk mix, some sort of goat cheese round that I've forgotten the name of, and a very mild blue, that I've also forgotten the name of... it was a very delicious blue, though, and similar to a saint agur.