Failure: Marrow-Poached Lobster Tail with Beet Risotto, Wilted Amaranth & Citrus Crème Fraiche

Honestly, what the hell was I thinking? I would love for you to think that every plate to grace my table is a triumph of gastronomic proportions, but I would be lying, dear readers. This meal was onesuch dinner that I F-ed up big time. I’m laughing now, but it took me a couple of days to write this given the fact that I was drowning my sorrow in a bucket of Gallo. Seriously though, this is a classic case of too many flavors on the plate, and I think it’s important to post it as a constant reminder to keep it real. Bells and whistles are great in the kitchen to the extent that they actually improve the end result, but doing things for the sake of doing them will often backfire. I had a conversation with a vegetarian friend recently who talked about a dining experience he’d had. He said it was as though the chef lumped vegetarians into the “kitchen sink” category. Well, if you don’t eat meat, you must eat millet, chard, corn, onions, pomegranates, avocados, maple syrup, polenta and mustard, so you’ll probably like it all in one dish, right? Wrong. Now that I evaluate the concoction I tried to serve my unsuspecting dinner guest, I realize I had a bout of temporary insanity. Let’s hope it’s temporary, anyway. Let’s talk ingredients. I brashly tried to mix lobster, vanilla, tarragon, crème fraiche, orange juice, amaranth, beets, rice, bone marrow and bay leaves into one dish. Whatever happened to the three ingredient rule? Jeesh! It all went wrong because when I get into my favorite grocery store, Uwajimaya, I am like Posh in a Prada boutique. It is especially excessive right now because it’s August- EVERYTHING is in season. Walking through the produce department on any given day, there are fifty new berries, bulbs, stone fruits, stalks, and greens I want to come home with me. I get home and survey my loot and often plan several meals from it, but on this occasion I was pressed for time, so I think I believed I could just combine everything into one meal. The amaranth looked so sweet, red and succulent, though in truth it takes like ze pee pee of a horse. It does not play nicely with the bacon in which I braised it, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. There’s a reason amaranth is healthfood.  After this meal I’m placing it firmly in the camp of arugula- a substance whose time has come and needs to get gone on the early train tomorrow morning before I strangle it for borrowing my toothbrush for the hundredth time this weekend.

The very nice butcher was hacking away at cow bones when I happened to walk by. There is no greater turn on, let me tell you (that bout of insanity I told you about may be persisting). I couldn’t resist but to buy a few pounds, thinking some slathery marrow sounded like just what the doctor would undoubtedly order if he were in my shoes-heart attack be damned- right? Then a few feet down the way, two lobster tails lured me toward them in a siren-song tractor beam sort of way. They jumped into my handcart, conversed with the bones, and asked me if they could go on a group date in the sous vide machine. Being the kind carnivore that I am, I told them no problem, take a bath in the bone marrow, and then I will eat you, you little smooshy fishies, bwaaahaaahaaahaa! Did I mention I had also gathered an armload of beets, both red and golden? Wanting to practice my Parisienne ball scooping technique (which is just melon-balling tiny spheres of any given veggie- so pretty with beets) I conjured a risotto resting place for the resulting beet balls. So think on this with me. We’ve got multicolored beets, risotto, lobster, marrow, amaranth and bacon on the plate- just to name the big contenders. Who the hell did I think was going to come out ahead? Certainly not my roiling stomach. I’ve illustrated what went wrong, so I bet you’d like to hear how it all tasted. Have you ever been to the zoo? You know that breed of primate- baboons, I think- that flagranty show off their manly boobs and butts and go around all king of the jungle flinging poo in eachothers faces and grimacing for the oogling hordes? Well can you imagine what the bottom of their cage tastes like at the end of a long day poo-flinging? That just about comes close to describing how delectable this meal was. Don’t poach lobster in bone marrow- it makes it mealy and gritty. Just plain don’t eat amaranth. It’s like hooking up with a stranger after a long night of tequila- looked good when you singled it out and brought it home, but it’s the next day and you still can’t get the rank taste out of your mouth. Beet risotto is fine. Great, even. But it will forever remind me of my one night stand with every damn thing on the supermarket shelves of Uwajimaya, and so on principle, I must abstain- at least until I get drunk and do it all over again! Moral of the story- don’t go to the store in a hungry hurry, and when in doubt, leave it out. That is all, thank you for listening to me rant, I hope you learn from the error of my ways, good bye.