Making Over the Martins: Maine Lobster Linguine

Our first stop on our U.S. Food tour is Maine. So, of course, we made Lobster! This was a first for our family. We bought live lobsters from our local asian market (I'm certain these lobsters came straight from Maine, though). Thanks to my husband who had the task of purchasing the lobsters, bringing them home and putting them in the sink, then into the boiling water. All of that was just way too scary for me.

Between screams, I managed to snap a picture of the lobsters as they were splashing all around in the sink:

Bring a large pot of water to a rapid boil, drop in the lobster, cover and boil for 15min. We cooked our lobsters individually because we didn't have a large enough pot for both. Our lobsters were about 1.5 lbs. A 1 lb lobster should cook for about 12-15min, a larger lobster (1.5-2 lbs) should cook for 15-20min.

Here they are cooked:

Then, I followed these directions for getting the meat from the cooked lobster:

The recipe for Lobster Linguine came from the Maine Lobster Council's website.

It's under campfire classic and some of the directions include cooking the lobster at camp. I don't know what kind of cooking equipment people in Maine take camping with them, but I'm pretty sure this is not a recipe I'd ever try to make at a campfire.

So, I just followed the recipe almost exactly as written, minus that campfire part. And we LOVED it! Here are the ingredients and instructions as I did them, which are only very slightly different than the original recipe.

Ingredients:

1 lb linguine
2-3 Tbsp olive oil
10 cloves garlic, chopped
4 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup chardonnay
1 Tbsp anchovy paste
4 scallions, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
10 large basil leaves, torn
1 lb lobster meat, cooked and chopped into bite sized pieces (I don't know if this was a pound of meat, it was 2 lobsters, more than enough meat for this amount of pasta)
salt and pepper to taste
cayenne pepper to taste
1 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1/2 cup pine nuts

Directions:

1. Cook linguine al dente, strain and toss with 2-3 Tbsp olive oil Cook lobster and shell as in video above
2. Heat 4Tbsp butter and 2Tbsp olive oil (you can substitute some or all of the butter with more olive oil, but lobster connoisseur's insist lobster is eaten with butter)
3. Add garlic, keep on medium heat and lower if garlic starts to brown
4. Add chardonnay, then anchovy paste (let reduce about 5-7min)

(the original recipe called for 2-3Tbsp of anchovy paste, I only used 1 because I had never used it before and it scared me a bit)

5. Add scallions and red pepper, cook 5min.

6. Add basil, lobster pieces, linguine, salt, pepper, and cayenne, toss to coat in sauce

7. Add parmesan cheese and pine nuts, remove from heat and serve

It was soooo good! I'll definitely be using this recipe in the future with shrimp or even just add more veggies. It's a great sauce! And homemade lobster was definitely worth the effort and expense (and freak out).

And while in Maine, we had blueberry muffins for dessert, so check those out too - YUM!