Lobster at Home

If you are the sort of cook who blanches when fresh, troll-caught king salmon costs more than $8 a pound, you're going to want to own a copy of Boston restaurateur Jasper White's Lobster at Home on the day you tumble for one or two of these shellfish kings in your local market. Lobster may well be relatively inexpensive in some parts of the country, but at anything from $9.99 to $13.99 a pound in cities where the delicious beasts from the deep must be flown in, well, a cook is likely to think twice about the purchase. For about $15, you get four ounces of actual edible lobster. To tread in such waters without an appropriate guide is, at best, foolhardy. Thank goodness for Jasper White.

Lobster at Home is the most comprehensive book available on the subject of selecting, cooking, and eating lobster. With this book in hand, you will know how to find and buy the best possible lobster for your money. And then, with a lobster at home scuttling across the kitchen counter, you will know what do with the beast, how to dispatch it, and a world of variations on how to cook it. Knowing what to do is an important issue when half the recipes in the book seem to start out asking for $30 worth of lobster. There are no recipes that call for anything resembling Lobster Helper.

White's enthusiasm for lobster is infectious, and his collection of recipes that rely either on lobster meat or broth, or enhance the experience of eating it, are nothing short of delicious. It will probably always remain something of a special-occasion treat for anyone who doesn't grow up in or marry into a lobster-fishing family. The special nature of this food demands the careful and creative handling espoused by Jasper White. If you ever buy and serve lobster, use this book. --Schuyler Ingle