The Food of Life

So last night I did a lobster stuffed flank steak. The stuffing consisted of 2 8 oz lobsters diced up, 1/2 cup of bread crumbs, 1 egg, 1/8 of a pound of bennings goat cheese, 1/4 stick of butter, 3 cloves of garlic finely chopped and 1 shallot finely chopped. First I drop my cast iron skillet on the burner and start to get it warmed up. Turn on the oven and preheat it to 400 degrees. I cut the lobster shells right down the center and pull back on the edges seperating the shell from the meat. Once exposed I just yank it out. Cut the lobster up into relatively small bite sized chunks. I toss in about a 1/4 stick of butter into the skillet and then toss in my shallot and garlic. After about 3 minutes i toss in the cut up lobster. It doesn't take much time to cook the lobster so keep an eye on it.

Before all this i have prepped my flank steak by pounding the hell out of it. After it's nice and tender, i drizzle on some olive oil and sprinkle on some ground sea salt and fresh ground black pepper and this fancy schmancy dom deluise seasoning that i just love. It's not really dom it's just got a picture of a fat guy on it that reminds me of dom deluise. I can never remember what it's called but it's delicious. Anywho I rub all the spices in with my hands and leave it on the counter at room temperature.

The stuffing I start out with a big bowl and dump in the 1/2 cup of bread crumbs, I crumble up the 1/8 pound of benning goat cheese, i drop in about 6 pads of butter, and crack 1 egg on top. Then I take the nice hot lobster garlic shallot mixture and pour it over the top. I give it a minute to cool, and then mix it by hand. Once it's nice and mixed, I spread it on the top of the flank steak. About a quarter inch from the top and maybe fill half the steak. Once that's on I roll it up nice and tight like a meat sushi roll :-). I tie it off with string and toss it back into the cast iron skillet so that i can seer it.

The beauty of cast iron is that once it's seered the entire pan can pop right into the oven. I love that. So in it goes. I set the timer for 30 minutes, and was gonna check on it then. My girlfriend was in the process of making mashed taters, so i just needed to not burn anything at this point. After about 20 minutes, I got worried so i dropped the oven down to about 200. All I had to do now was sit and wait. About 40 mintues later i pulled out the meat and it smelled delicious. I was terribly worried it would be over cooked, but as I cut in, the middle section was perfectly medium rare (I'm a rare guy but i'll live with medium rare) and the ends were pink enough for my girlfriend to tolerate. She likes her meat typically served with A1 and DONE I mean like ruined. I'm slowly teaching her though.

With the left over stuffing I just made lobster cakes and we had a nice appetizer with a side of cayanne aoili i had made not too long ago.