Warm Lobster Salad with a Truffle Butter Beurre Blanc

Another fine recipe adapted from Nico Ladenis.  This salad works as well or better with delicate sweet little langoustines, but in my kitchen, one more often finds a spot of leftover lobster…and this is fine justice for the scraps that remain.  If you haven’t got a truffle, just give a good dousing of truffle oil to the truffle butter sauce right before serving.  No matter, this is so good, you are sure to be thinking about it for days afterwards.

Beurre blanc is a versatile and useful sauce to add to your cannon. It is well suited to this salad, but in truth, many salads and vegetable dishes are livened with this type of dressing.

Flesh of a 1 ½ lbs lobster, cut into reasonably large chunks

Truffle Butter Dressing

• Truffle peelings from 1 medium white truffle
• 75 ml Noilly Prat or other dry vermouth
• Juice of ½ lemon, plus a bit
• 15 ml double cream (1 tablespoon)
• 60 g unsalted butter

Salad Dressing

• Macadamia nut oil (or hazelnut)
• Juice of lemon
• Salt to taste

Salad

• Segments of one orange, cut into quarters
• 1 avocado, sliced into large slices
• 2 medium carrots, peeled, peeled, peeled
• Mixture of greens such as a touch of radicchio, mache, oak leaf, curly endive, and so on to give a variety of colour, taste, and texture
• Peeled truffle, shaved thin

First make the truffle butter dressing.  Finely chop the truffle peelings and place in a sauté pan.  Pour over the vermouth and reduce by half, until it is slightly syrupy.  Squeeze in the lemon juice.  Add the cream.  Chop the butter into small pieces and add a little at a time, just as you would make a beurre blanc.  Take off the heat.  Whip to amalgamate, add a little salt, a little more lemon juice.  Once it has cooled down slightly, toss the lobster on top, and cover to keep warm.  If you are going to add a little truffle oil, use white, and add it only just before serving. 

Make the vinaigrette with the nut oil, a little salt, and lemon juice.  The idea will not be to overdress the salad, just enough to give a very light coating and to give the nuttiness of the oil.  Toss together the greens, avocado, carrot peelings, with the dressing.

Place the salad on warm plates.  Dot with the truffle bits.  Stir the lobster into the sauce, and spoon lobster onto each plate.  Then drizzle a small amount of the truffle butter sauce onto the salad on each plate.  Eat at once.  Serves 4.