Homard à la Palestine

Homard à la Palestine (curried lobster with pilaff rice) teaches the first law of shellfish cookery: the meat is only half the lobster. The carapace, claws, head, and every coral-colored scrap carry the depth, and this sauce gets its authority by crushing them, frying them hard, and extracting them as though making a bisque. Waste the shells and no amount of curry butter can put the character back.

The original kitchen assumed a saucier on staff, fumet never off the fire, a mortar large enough for the carapace, and a salamander waiting for dishes that needed one, though this sauce never goes beneath it. At home, the fishmonger dispatches and joints one large lobster, a towel and mallet replace the mortar, and one saucepan does the sauce work. I change the live cutting because it is neither humane nor sensible for an unpracticed home cook. The separate brigade stations are scaffolding and can go; pounding the shells, skimming their oil, reducing the liquor, and mounting it with real curry butter are the dish, and they stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The finished platter should look generous: butter-gold pilaff around the rim, rosy lobster in the center, and an ochre shell sauce gleaming over it, with more waiting beside the platter. The decisive step comes after the meat leaves its shell. Crush those shells thoroughly and fry them until their aroma fills the kitchen, because the shells carry it; don't waste them.