Chilli Basil Lobster was created with pre-cooked frozen lobster but you can use fresh lobster too. It is messy to eat, but ever so tasty.
After buying several small pre-cooked frozen lobsters on special, I ended up using the last of them for the little appetizer you see pictured above. Given the use of the Basil and the Chili as the major flavoring components, the dish is vaguely Thai in spirit, although it could easily be incorporated into a Western meal. It was a bit of an experiment, and I wasn’t really expecting to write a post about it initially, so, rather than provide a recipe in the usual format, I am going to just describe how I went about making it. It is actually pretty easy…
The Basic Method
After chopping the tail, claws, and main ‘arm sections’ into small pieces suitable for easy eating with the fingers, I made a stock using the body section and all the little legs. This involved no more than boiling them under sufficient water to cover for 30 – 45 minutes, and then straining out the solids and reducing the resultant stock to a very concentrated liquor of no more than a quarter cup or so.
After that, I fried some garlic puree in a little oil and added the stock along with a splash of sherry and some Sriracha sauce. When this was steaming, I added the lobster chunks and cooked for a few minutes until the sauce had thickened to no more than a syrupy glaze and then added chopped basil leaves. A few seconds later, when the leaves had just wilted, the dish was ready to be served.
In any event, this was a delightful dish, even if it is a bit messy to eat. You could certainly use fresh lobster here, or even crab, or large shell-on shrimp, and, if you wanted to save yourself a little time, you could also skip the additional flavoring ingredients and simply use a couple of tablespoons of the following:
Enjoy…