A new cookbook has entered my life, and keeps putting a smile on my face. Whether I'm reading through recipes, discovering a cool new technique, or enjoying the amazing finished product, this book is downright... fun. My first real foray into the world of Michel Richard was making these mind-blowing Lobster Burgers.
The book that is so thoroughly rocking my world lately is Michel Richard's Happy in the Kitchen. It's a collection of really cool and fun recipes and some awesome presentations that I can't wait to play with.
The first component I made was actually the side dish: Peach Slaw. It's a super-simple, fresh, and delicious combination of peaches, lemon juice, ginger, a little Greek yogurt, and a touch of sugar.
You're supposed to use unripe peaches, but I wrote "not super-ripe" on my grocery list, so a couple of my peaches were a little too soft for my mandolin and they all ended up being julienned by hand...
The peaches are combined with the remaining ingredients...
... and you have yourself a simple, perfect summer side dish. The dish gets better as it sits (Richard recommends making it a day in advance), which is why I made it first...
The next component I started prep on, which required several hours in the freezer before I could complete it and thus also needed to be done ASAP, was a batch of the Wafer-Thin Potato Crisps, which you can see the full prep for over at their very own post...
I started these around 11am and finished them at 7pm, so I'm glad I started early... Next up were the hamburger buns. In theory, you could use store-bought buns, but that seems sort of silly if you're taking such care with the rest of your ingredients... especially since they're so very easy (if a bit time-consuming) to make. The recipe is actually a food processor dough. Bread flour, salt, and sugar go into the food processor, along with yeast that has started to get all bubbly in a little warm water.
Water and a little olive oil are drizzled in with the motor running, and in a couple seconds you have dough.
The dough goes into a floured bowl and is allowed to rise for about an hour, until it has doubled in size.
From here, the dough is separated into balls...
... and allowed to rest for 10 minutes before being rolled into 4-inch circles.
These are given another hour to rise, until they have doubled in height...
The buns go into a 450°F for 5 minutes, after which they're pulled out and an egg wash is applied. (It would be too difficult to apply the egg wash without deflating the buns if you did it before par-baking them...)
A few more minutes in the oven, and you have some gorgeous, light, delicious hamburger buns...
Still a long way from dinner... Next up are the oven-dried tomatoes.
I tried to find a bun-sized tomato, which I then sliced, drizzled with olive oil, and sprinkled with a pinch of sugar, salt and pepper, thyme leaves, and some thinly sliced garlic.
This goes into a 225°F oven for about an hour, to slightly dry the tomatoes and concentrate the flavor.
Getting closer... Next up is the ginger mayonnaise. I'm not going to lie to you. My two favorite techniques for making mayo are to use a blender or to have somebody else do all the whisking... My blender can't do that with a solitary egg yolk, and I was in the kitchen alone, so I was stuck doing the whisking myself this time... This is pretty much your standard mayo recipe... 
Egg yolk, Dijon, and a pinch of sea salt are combined...
... then the oil is drizzled in very slowly as you are constantly whisking, until you magically find yourself with a bowl of mayo. Season with lemon juice, a pinch of sugar, and a couple drops of hot sauce (Richard calls for Tabasco, but I hate Tabasco so I used Sriracha...), and you're done.
I used half of this to make Ginger Remoulade for my extra Potato Crisps, and combined the other half with finely grated ginger to turn it into Ginger Mayo for my burger.
The last component is the burger patties themselves. I started off with three lobsters, named (from right to left) Bob, Enid, and Mr. Pinchy. Mr. Pinchy's claws were a blur in several pictures because he clearly wanted a piece of me...
Not so tough now, are you Mr. Pinchy?
(Sorry... Tasteless crustacean-killing humor...) The lobsters are boiled for only a couple minutes, then submerged in an ice bath. The idea is both to kill them and to make it slightly easier to separate the meat from the shell, but not to really cook them. The lobsters are then broken down, with tails and knuckle meat going in one bowl and claw meat in another.
The tail and knuckle meat is cut into nice-sized chunks, and the claw meat is puréed to be used as a binder.
What this means is that your lobster burger is made entirely out of lobster. No filler. Nothing to interfere with that awesome lobster-y goodness. This is also a brilliant use of claw meat, which doesn't exactly have the best texture around. The mixture is shaped into patties and refrigerated for a few hours to set.
After starting out in the kitchen at around 10am, I finally made it to the final stage of cooking at around 8pm (during half-time of the Bucs-Dolphins preseason game... Go Bucs!). The patties are cooked in a little butter and olive oil on the stove top initially, then moved into the oven for a few minutes to finish.
And (finally) its time to plate. Things start by toasting your homemade burger bun...
A little ginger mayo goes down and is topped with an oven dried tomato. Richard recommends using the ginger mayo as glue between layers as you assemble, as well.
Next comes that awesome, 100%-lobster "burger"...
Four of your beautiful, toasty, crunchy potato crisps are next...
These are topped with some baby greens (I chose arugula)...
That's it. You have yourself a beautiful and insanely delicious lobster burger...
The "lid" went on my burger and I added a big scoop of Peach Slaw next to it to complete the meal...
I can't even tell you how awesome this was. As I mentioned back when I made that stupid Lobster Salad that made me hate Alfred Portales, the trouble with lobster recipes is that lobster is so very delicious when you just cook it perfectly then dip it in some melted (Amish) butter. Something has to be pretty darned tasty to be worth more effort than that. This dish was about 8 extra hours of effort over a simple lobster-with-melted-(Amish)-butter meal, but I don't regret a single minute of that time because this was that good. If I ordered this in a restaurant, I would sit there flabbergasted at how they had made something that looks so simple taste so good. The potato crisps are definitely a key to the awesomeness, adding that toasty, crispy, awesomeness... but the concentrated tomato flavor and subtle ginger accents are pretty great, too. All of it just works together beautifully, and the ginger in the Peach Slaw made it a perfect pairing. I probably wouldn't tell you to go out and make this dish unless you love spending full days in the kitchen, so I'll just tell you that I love this cookbook. It totally and completely rocks. Can't wait to play with it again...
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