serinde

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.)