Growing up in Maine, lobster stew was always something we’d make with the leftovers from a lobster boil. We’d pick out the tiny bits of meat and cook the shells to make a rich stock. Our stew used this stock cream/milk, butter, onion and the lobster bits.
Moving to Texas 15+ years ago lobster isn’t really something which is typically on the menu. So when I first when to Gaido’s in Galveston, I was surprised they had a lobster bisque on their menu and decided to try it. While not the same as lobster stew, the bisque was very good. Eventually I was given a Gaido’s cookbook which included a recipe for it.
This year I decided it might be nice to have the lobster bisque as our Christmas Eve meal. So I dug out the cookbook and began looking at the recipe. I expected to find some similarities in the base but was greatly mistaken. No lobster at all. Well what do you expect from concentrated bouillon base in a jar.
This fact made me pretty unhappy and I decided to modify the recipe to use real lobster stock and meat. After all I had bought tails on sale! So I went to work figuring out how to add in lobster stock without messing up the overall liquid ratio in the soup and what was the best time in the cooking process to add in the actual bits of lobster. The final product made me really happy as it combined the best aspects of the Gaido’s recipe with those from what we made growing up.