Butter bath

Apr 10, 2002

A Chef Invents a Lobster Dish, and Pots Start Boiling All Over I wrote about lobster back on Valentine’s Day, when Erin and I made an island-style lobster salad. And I know that lobster is a favorite food for many of you, especially the Shaughnessy brothers. Today’s New York Times includes a feature about a new way to cook lobster that gives tender, juicy meat infused with butter flavor; a recipe is included with the article, and this recipe comes from a cookbook that I’ve given as a gift, and dearly wish I had on my own shelf. Chef Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry Cookbook is a gorgeous book, with amazing recipes and beautiful photographs, as well as short profiles of the artisan farmers who supply the top-quality ingredients Keller uses at The French Laundry. (This is a restaurant I dream of visiting, and I’m hoping that my mother’s application for a job in Napa, California comes through so I can visit Keller’s nearby restaurant.) These profiles were written by Michael Ruhlman, a Cleveland writer who I knew at and through Northern Ohio Live Magazine (a magazine I still write for; see my Inventing the Future columns at zuiker.com/anton. Ruhlman is an excellent writer, and has written a handful of books that are both well-written and very interesting. One of his books is about his education at the Culinary Institute of America, and gives a good look at the training of our country’s top chefs.

Anton Zuiker ☄