Chef Niklas Ekstedt shares his warm and rich consomme with lobsters and porcini recipe from his book Ekstedt: The Nordic Art of Analogue Cooking.
Ingredients
2 live lobsters
2 tablespoons clarified butter
a bunch of chickweed
sea salt
For the lobster broth
3 shallots, thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
15g butter
500ml Chicken Stock
1 bay leaf
4 sprigs of thyme
For the pickled mushrooms
1 garlic clove, cut into
quarters
100ml extra virgin olive oil
50ml Apple Cider Vinegar
50ml white wine
100g fresh porcini, cut into
2cm dice
3 black peppercorns
1 bay leaf
For the butter-sautéed porcini
1 large fresh porcini
15g butter
Method
Put 150g sea salt into a large pan with 5 litres water and bring to the boil.
Add the lobsters and cover with a lid. Cook for 3 minutes. Lift out the lobsters and cool in iced water.
Pull away the claws and tail from each lobster. Remove the meat from the claws and tail in whole pieces and set aside. Keep all the shells and the lobster heads. Open the bodies and remove the grey feathery gills; discard.
Roughly crush all the lobster shells.
Sauté the shallots and garlic in the butter in a wide pan. Add the crushed lobster shells and sauté for 2–3 minutes. Add the chicken stock, bay leaf and thyme and bring to the boil, then simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and sit aside for 1 hour. Strain into a clean pan and season with salt. Set aside, ready to reheat for serving.
To pickle the mushrooms, sauté the garlic in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil without colouring it. Add the vinegar and white wine and bring to the boil.
Simmer until reduced by half. Add the diced porcini, peppercorns and bay leaf and simmer for a further 20 minutes. Remove from the heat, add the rest of the olive oil and leave the mushrooms to cool in the liquid.
Clean the large porcini and cut into 3 x 3cm pieces. Sauté in the butter until golden brown.
Brush the lobster claws with 1 tablespoon of the clarified butter, then hot smoke for 4–6 minutes until cooked all the way through.
Grill the lobster tails over embers at a high heat for 2–3 minutes on each side. Finish by brushing the lobster tails with the remaining clarified butter and placing back over the embers for 30 seconds.
Drain the pickled porcini and divide among 2–4 bowls. Top with the butter-sautéed porcini, grilled lobster tails and hot-smoked lobster claws, then add a couple of stems of chickweed and the hot lobster broth.
Ekstedt: The Nordic Art of Analogue Cooking (Bloomsbury) £40
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