fitfool

While lobster was so cheap in August (just $4/pound at the grocery store in the Boston/NH Seacoast region), we binged on lobster dishes for a week. Steamed lobsters with melted butter, lobster quiche, and today's dish. Inspired by hearing canyoncat mentioning he cooked up lobster mac-n-cheese a few years ago, I've been curious to try making that dish ever since. Yummy! Definitely hanging on to this recipe to make again some day. When I served this up, there were lots of contented mmmmms at the table. I felt lucky to be enjoying that meal together with both friends and family. Lobster Mac-n-Cheese
Meat from 2 lobsters (~8oz), chopped roughly
1/2 lb gruyere cheese, shredded
1/2 lb cheddar cheese, shredded
2 cups 2% milk
5 Tbsp butter, melted over medium low heat
5 Tbsp flour
2 cloves garlic, minced
some ground black pepper
~ half pound of elbow macaroni
grated hard Italian cheese (such as parmesan or pecorino romano)
Saltine crackers ~8 of them, crumbled

1. Set pot of water on to boil for the pasta and cook up the pasta until done. Drain pasta and set aside.
2. Preheat oven to 350F
3. Melt butter over medium low heat in a large pot (we used the enameled-cast-iron pot). Mix flour into butter to make a roux. Pour in milk a half cup at a time and mix the roux into the milk to make it smooth.
4. In a separate pan, we sauteed garlic in oil to brown the garlic and then added it to the sauce. (That had been in a separate pan because we decided to add the garlic later, after we had started melting cheese into the sauce already)
5. Keeping heat on low, drop shredded cheese into the roux+milk and stir to melt the cheese into the sauce.
6. After all cheese is melted, add the garlic and stir in the lobster chunks and sprinkle in some black pepper. Stir in the cooked pasta.
7. Crumble saltines over top and sprinkle on grated parmesan or pecorino romano cheese over top.
8. Place pot in preheated oven for ~10minutes to brown. Never did really brown but looked close enough. Next time might try turning up the heat to try to get it to brown. (maybe under broiler?)
9. Took it out and it was yummy.

Note: There was enough sauce that I think I could've added a little more pasta to sop up the pasta but I didn't want to dilute it too much since I wanted lobster to be prominently featured. Also, I would've minced an onion for this too but one person doesn't like onions so we skipped that. Same for adding a little mustard. (though I was also hesitant about adding mustard because I didn't know if that would distract from tasting lobster).