Share with your friends!
Yum
The relatively reasonable prices for fresh lobster the past few weeks really caught my attention. First, my family enjoyed a traditional New England lobster dinner, the epitome of simple luxury for us, but we weren’t sated. Summer lobster season was here and we weren’t ready to call it a day just yet. We all needed a little more lobster – but this time, maybe prepared a bit differently (no bibs or nut crackers!). I put on my thinking cap and decided to come up something new and interesting, and maybe even a smidgen elegant. My new creation? Gluten-free Creamy Lobster Tagliatelle is creamy pasta and chunks of lobster combined in one spectacular dish. It doesn’t get any better than this.
Along with the lobster, I used a couple of high quality convenience products so the dish came together pretty easily. For the pasta, I used a 9 ounce box of Jovial’s excellent gluten-free tagliatelle. If you’ve never tried their delicious rice-based pastas I heartily suggest you do. They’re really good.
And if you don’t want to make our own seafood stock (yeah, me either), I recommend you buy a container of More Than Gourmet’s Classic Seafood Stock concentrate. I made a very flavorful, extra strong cup of stock for this recipe using half of a 1.5 ounce package of their Glace de Fruits de Mer Gold® (.75 ounce concentrate to one cup of warm water).
Dairy-free cooks can substitute Earth Balance for the unsalted butter, and either pureed silken tofu or cashew cream for the heavy cream. If you have a dairy-free Parmesan cheese you like, you can use that, or leave it out entirely.
The fragrant saffron, thyme and wine scented seafood sauce will attract all the folks in your household to the stove for a close up sniff. It smells heavenly while it’s cooking. And take it from someone who’s made this delicious pasta dish several times now, after you make it the first time, you’ll see that it’s good enough to serve for a special dinner party or holiday meal, but simple enough to serve any night of the week you can score some well-priced lobster. Make it as soon as you can!
Creamy Lobster Tagliatelle
I like to use fresh lobster in this pasta dish, especially when it’s in season, but you can make it with shelled and deveined, cooked shrimp (tails removed) and it will still be delicious. I typically ask my fish monger to cook the lobster for me, then I bring it home, remove the meat, and store it in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator until I’m ready to use it (you won’t have to rewarm it, just add it to the hot cooked pasta and seafood sauce and it will warm up quickly). You’ll need about three 1 1/4 pound lobsters to get 12 ounces of cooked meat (or four 1 1/4 pound lobsters to get 16 ounces); there is never as much as you think inside the shell and you’ll want to use only the tail and claw meat for this dish. You can also use the cooked meat from lobster tails.
Serves 3-4 for a main course
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/3 cup finely minced shallots
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/3 cup finely chopped plum tomato
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 cup seafood stock (I used More Than Gourmet Classic Seafood Stock)
1/2 cup heavy cream*
1/4 cup dry Marsala wine
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Pinch saffron
Salt and freshly grated black pepper
12-16 ounces cooked lobster meat cut into large chunks
9 ounces Jovial gluten-free tagliatelle
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add shallots and garlic and stir until coated in butter. Cover pan, turn heat to very low and sweat shallots and garlic until tender, about 5 minutes (stir occasionally and be careful they don’t brown).
2. Add tomatoes and thyme to pan and stir well. Cook over medium heat until tomatoes start to soften, about 3 minutes.
3. Stir in seafood stock, heavy cream, Marsala wine, Dijon mustard, and saffron. Turn heat to high and boil until sauce is reduced down to 1 1/4 cups, stirring occasionally. Add salt and freshly grated black pepper to taste. Cover and set aside (the sauce can be made ahead and kept in refrigerator in a tightly sealed container for two days. Rewarm before using).
4. Cook pasta in a large pot of water to desired firmness, drain and return to pot. Add lobster, hot seafood sauce, and Parmesan cheese and stir until well combined. Serve immediately.
* Dairy-free heavy cream options for this recipe include pureed silken tofu and cashew cream.
©2015 by Annalise Roberts