8 months ago
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By now we’ve all seen the picture of what Martha Stewart ate for dinner last week. Yes my friends, it’s time for us to discuss… The Chobster! dun Dun DUN! Technically a rather innocuous sounding chicken stuffed with lobster, the photo Martha snapped to Instagram more resembled a chicken humping a lobster, who affectionately curled its tail around the chicken in return. Martha didn’t prepare this abomination feast herself; she was dining (or as she put it in her caption, “ding,” I kid you not) at a newly opened NYC French brasserie called Maison Barnes, presumably donning a $500 bikini as underwear in the fine eatery. This inter-species dish alone cost half that bikini! Slate staff writer Luke Winkie (my new favorite name) contacted Maison Barnes executive chef Romain Paumier to talk about this divisive delicacy:
Shock and jaw: What is going on here? Is it Mastering the Art of French Cooking according to David Lynch? Was it harvested from the eighth dimension? Is it going to attach to my head and suck my brains out? Are these what the unseen aliens in 3 Body Problem look like? Beyond the provocative intention of the plating — just look at that poor lobster’s exoskeleton mounted around the chicken, like it’s undergone a satanic rite — I find myself baffled by the concept behind the flavor profile. Breast meat and lobster is simply not a combination you’re going to find on many menus in America.
Dinner as a show: “This dish is a classic, but it’s usually made with crayfish,” said Paumier, who, it should be said, is well-reviewed and most certainly knows what he’s talking about. “It was created in the 19th century, and it has disappeared with modern cuisine. This is my attempt to bring back those ideas, and also to make it into a bit of a show.”
The preparation: On the Maison Barnes menu, the dish is called Poularde Homardine, which literally translates to “lobster chicken.” The restaurant serves it table side, usually for two to three people, and it goes for $250, according to the menu. Contrary to what you might assume from the plating, the recipe does not call for a chef to roast a whole lobster inside a poultry carcass. Yes, Paumier does use every part of the crustacean in the preparation of the dish, but the crimson-scalded chunks surrounding the chicken are mostly there for decoration. In fact, the only piece of the lobster that is cooked with the bird is its head, which is flambéed with cognac and is removed from the chicken while it’s carved. The method gives the poultry a sweet infusion of lobster flavor, accentuated even further when the head’s juices are squeezed into a sauce made from a base of lobster bisque, chicken jus, and crème fraîche — which truly is about as French as it gets. As for the lobster tail? Well, that’s just poached in aromatics, glazed with butter, and served alongside the chicken. Simple as that.
It’s the French surf and turf! Paumier himself refers to the dish as France’s very own take on surf and turf — the much more American idea of serving a butter-bathed lobster tail with a bone-in ribeye. He also was not surprised at all — and, in fact, was encouraged — by the people who filled Stewart’s Instagram comments with cries of shock and horror. (The top one reads, “Girl, respectfully what the f–k.”) “Some people are going to be amazed, and some people are going to be shocked. They’re going to say, ‘Why are you combining the chicken with the lobster?’ That’s what I expected, especially from American people, because this is not their culture,” said Paumier. “It’s what we want. Food is an art. If you do something that is ordinary, people are going to forget about it.”
Just hearing “chicken and lobster” as a combo doesn’t sound offensive. After all, we Americans have turducken — chicken stuffed into duck stuffed into turkey — made prominent by Louisiana chef Paul Prudhomme (may he rest in paprika). And apparently there’s a British version called gooducken — chicken stuffed into duck stuffed into goose. Obviously, these ‘ducken dishes confine the combos to varieties of birds. But so what? If a shellfish and poultry want to make sweet gastronomical music together, who are we to judge?! That’s why I think it truly comes down to the visual presentation that makes the coupling seem jarring. I mean, I know it’s not good to play photo assumption, but my goodness there’s a lot going on in Martha’s shot! I’m turned off and turned on all at once. At $250 a pop, though, I’m unlikely to get a taste of the creature from the French lagoon any time soon. Crazy to think that lobster used to be peasant food, a fact I desperately hope Martha Stewart is aware of.
photos credit Getty and via Instagram
