Bear Paw Meanderings

I am always finding a lobster on sale and sticking it in the freezer. That way when I want to I can have what I call a triple surf dinner. It is a hot lobster with drawn butter, lobster salad and a shrimp cocktail with homemade cocktail sauce. Please note that when I say lobster I mean lobster tail.

It is very easy to steam a lobster. Get it thawed out and steam it a minute for each ounce it weighs. Take the shell off when the lobster is steamed and serve with a vat of good hot butter.

For a salad, it is just as easy. Thaw the lobster; take out the meat from the tail, cut up and sauté in butter until pink and gloriously done. Then cool while putting together the rest of the salad. Let’s make the sauce first. It is identical to a tuna salad sauce I make. Use 1 cup mayonnaise, one half cup of ranch, one half cup of sour cream. Mix together then add a good dollop of sugar, salt and pepper and a good dollop of hot sauce. Some Old Bay would be good here too. Mix well and reserve.

Cook about ten ounces of salad macaroni. Cook well and reserve.

Now let’s chop up some goodies for the salad. Chop up some pickles until very small and add them. How about a quarter cup of pickle relish? Maybe add some chopped up potato chips and maybe a half cup of your favorite cheese, shredded. I like to add a can of drained black olives and a quarter cup of drained green olives sliced.

Well, mix all that together, add the lobster meat and let cool in the fridge. If it dries out too much, add more mayonnaise. This makes for a wonderful lobster salad.

For your shrimp cocktail first the sauce. To a bottle of cocktail sauce add a quarter cup of horseradish. Then add sugar to taste and some hot sauce. A couple of green onions chopped up and added at this point will only be better.

Use large shrimp, like 16 to 18 to the pound. Use four per cocktail. Shell, devein and boil until turning bright pink. I have found it is far better to cook your own shrimp than to buy already cooked. Those have not been cooked enough for my liking.

In a fancy glass like a sherbet, fill with lettuce shreds, hang the shrimp on the sides, add cocktail sauce in the middle and finish with some chopped green onion if desired.

There is my triple surf. Hope you like it as well as I did when I made it last weekend.