Linguine with Lobster-Tarragon Sauce

Recipe: Linguine with Lobster-Tarragon Sauce

The first recipe in my project! Still need a cool name for my adventure. For now I’m calling it the Williams-Sonoma project, but that doesn’t seem cool enough. J I’m really excited about this adventure. A) I love to cook and B) I picked recipes that are slightly out of my comfort level.Most of my recipes could be considered “basic” or somewhat for the casual cook. I do very good with them, but still most of the things I cook aren’t too elaborate. With this project, I’ll do some cooking techniques I’ve never done before and cook food I’ve never cooked (like lobster!). I need something to push me. Maybe this will push me to get bolder in more areas of my life.

Some cool things I learned with this recipe while prepping for it. When cooking with wine, buy real wine not the typical cooking wine you get in the grocer section. All along I’ve been using the grocer section version of “cooking” wine instead of real wine. Guess I never thought I was allowed to use real wine, if that makes sense. But real wine gives the food a more quality, authentic flavor. This recipe called for a dry white wine, so I used Chardonnay. It also called for Cognac, I found a really small bottle at the North End Market. Now that I’m typing this, there was an awful lot of alcohol in this dish. Maybe I didn’t need to drink that glass of wine with my meal after all. Perhaps the dish alone would’ve caused a buzz! Haha. I decided to follow the recipe to a T and use fresh herbs instead of dried. I always heard fresh herbs tasted much better than dried. And man, is that true. I may never use dried herbs again. The fresh Tarragon lingered in my mouth. I’ve used Tarragon before, but never had a good sense of what it tasted like until today. Now, don’t ask me to describe it. J I’m not that sophisticated yet. I wasn’t sure where to find lobster meat, so I google’d manufactures who distribute it. I found a company Bar Harbor that sells lobster meat in a can. I’ve bought Bar Harbor Clam Chowder before at the Marietta Giant Eagle, so I was pretty sure I could find the lobster meat there too. I was wrong….gotta love the limitations of living in the Mid-Ohio Valley. But I talked to the meat department lady, who is really really helpful whenever I’m there, and she convinced me to buy an actual lobster tail. Which in hindsight was probably what I was supposed to do anyway. So not only am I getting a chance to step out of my comfort zone, I’m learning how to go with the flow when my initial plans go awry somewhat, and how to get my plans back on track without freaking out.

Now for cooking the recipe. My plan is to cook on Wednesdays and Saturdays. But since I had to buy a frozen lobster tail instead of canned lobster meat, I had to push my cooking to Sunday so the lobster could thaw. I think this was a great first recipe. The recipe sounds really elaborate, but it was actually pretty easy to make. It took me about 2.5 hours because I wanted to chop all of my veggies by hand instead of using the food processor. Cooking the lobster tail was a piece of cake. Tip for cooking lobster, it doesn’t take long at all. In fact, it shouldn’t take long. If you cook it too long, the meat gets rubbery. (Another helpful hint from my favorite meat counter lady). I only needed to boil my lobster tail for 3 minutes because I had to cook it again later in the recipe.Taking the shell of the tail was interesting. It was harder than I imagined. I wasn’t able to pull it off in one fell swoop. I sorta had to pull it apart in sections, which didn’t matter since I was going to smash it to pieces once I got it off. Smashing the shell was fun though. I wonder if my neighbors thought I was going crazy hearing all the random loud banging coming from my kitchen. I only had one mishap in my entire experience. I got so excited because things were going well, I didn’t pay attention to the amount of tomato paste I had to put in and put 1 tsp in instead of ½ tsp. But it didn’t seem to affect the flavor. Which leads me to the most important part. The dish was amazing. It looked so pretty (as you can see from the pictures). I’m soo proud of myself. I can’t wait to make this dish again for someone so I can impress them. J This is definitely a dish I’ll make again. 1 dish down, 359 to go…