Lobster Boil at kitchen Conservatory

We had a blast last night at KC,  Lobster boils are so easy and fun it is hard to beat for a casual get together.  By the time class was over everyone was hugging and exchanging emails and promising to stay in touch. 

Ingredients:
lobster
red potatoes
corn on the cob
sausage (kielbasa, andouille, or Spanish chorizo)
manilla clams
shrimp
mussels

We did our boil in a turkey fryer.  So now you have another way of using that turkey fryer.  We used 1 1/4 pound lobsters (called chicken lobsters because of their size) purchassed from Bob's Seafood, they were fresh and lively.  There isn't really a recipe for this just timing.  In a pot large enough to hold all the vegetables and lobsters, place a layer of seaweed put in the potatoes, add enought water plus some beer to fill the pot, leaving room for the rest of the ingredients.  Add 2 Tablespoons of sea salt for every quart of water you use.  Bring to the boil and cook the potatoes 5 to 8 minutes.  Add the sausage, and corn on the cob, cook 3 to 5 minutes, add the lobsters head down into the water and boil 5 minutes, add the manilla clams and shrimp boil for 2 minutes, add the mussels and cook until every things is opened and the lobsters are bright red-1 to 2 minutes usually.  (if you use clams that are not manilla, their cooking time will increase).  Strain  and dump onto a table lined with butcher paper or old newspaper and serve with melted butter.

We also made a tenderloin caprese salad to start with.

A really diverse group lots of kids and parents, even a couple extremely young'uns, and a recently engaged couple-you can probably pick them out from the candid pictures.

One new trick I learned last night from Anne (who owns KC) was a rolling pin trick.  You can use a rolling pin to squeeze the meat out of the legs-pretty neat.  At the end there wasn't a single shrimp, mussel, clam, or morsel of lobster left.