Aubrey-Maturin Dinner: Prep #1: Bisque du Homard

I am intending to serve a Regency-era dinner in honor of the Glorious First of June. I've had the appropriate culinary reference for quite some time but haven't taken full advantage of it; and I figured if I didn't make a firm commitment--i.e., one that I made to other people--it wasn't going to happen. So.

Dinners of the era started with soup. What soup? All of the ones in the book look equally complicated and painstaking, so had not made up my mind until I went into the store today (to get stuff for Forcemeat, which I failed at anyways) and there was a big sign saying WE NOW HAVE LIVE LOBSTERS!! Okay, bisque du homard it is.

( Warning: Graphic depictions of crustacean death ahead )

Bisque du Homard, cont.

After the traumatic lobster butchery and subsequent time-out, I resumed operations on le bisque. The next stages went very well, and setting brandy on fire & dumping it into a pot of dismembered crustaceans did much to restore my spirits. However, I hit another stumbling block when it came time to take the meat out of the shells. I didn't think it would be that big a whoop--I'm quite fond of crab, and I'm well-accustomed to extracting meat from it, and I presumed this wouldn't be much different. HA HA HA

I broke my good kitchen shears, the nutcracker was insufficient, small bits of shell flew everywhere; finally elibalin brought forth a ballpeen hammer. This was the correct implement, clearly. Still a bit tedious, but far less frustrating. (The recipe also called for crushing the de-meated shells & putting them into the broth. I just dumped 'em in entire because I was Sick Of This Shit.) The shell drama also meant that the milk got somewhat scorched, but this I fixed. Also, had light cream instead of heavy cream; did not seem to matter.

I'm pretty pleased with the end result. I don't see how it serves twelve as an appetizer, maybe if you are serving it in demitasses, but they do also say you can thin it out a bit with more broth--elibalin and I are eating it more as a stewlike thingy. Still don't know if it's going to be too much of a PITA to do as the opening salvo of a three-remove dinner, but we'll see. (I do note that a lot of the work could be done in advance.)