Charlie Brown gets it.
“SUMMER, WE HARDLY KNEW YA.”
In fact, sometimes, we can barely recognize ya!
June certainly can’t be trusted. Sure, there are some summer-like days…but in this part of the country, we get more than our share of April-like stretches: cold, wet, raw, windy.
Then, in a few short weeks, it’s June 21, the summer solstice, and suddenly the days are getting shorter. Hell, summer hasn’t even started and we’re already on the slippery slope to fall and winter.
The 4th of July helps for a day – but just a day. Target starts promoting its back-to-school merchandise on the 5th.
Making matters worse, a definitive “FALL IS HERE” sign arrives in early August when the Vikings gear up. It was August 9th, I believe, that the Vikings hosted (and I might note, defeated) the Houston Texans at US Bank Stadium.
HOLD ON. We ain’t done yet.
The final and official, brutal stake in the heart of our Minnesota summer is…THE STATE FAIR. That means the leaves are about to turn. And, wait a minute, is Target already sneaking Christmas decorations into its aisles?
Well, perhaps there’s a glimmer of hope.
Pete Wells, the former food critic of the New York Times, recently published a piece on “The Hand-held Symbol of Summer” – THE LOBSTER ROLL…our last grasp to hold on to a fleeting summer.
A brief history…and a sorta grubby one.
The early settlers in Massachusetts and Maine viewed the lobster as a nuisance – as trash food. After storms in New England, lobsters would wash ashore and pile up, sometime to a depth of a foot or more. Irritated locals would use them as bait or fertilizer. The state would use them to feed the destitute and incarcerated.
Lobster was actually referred to as “poor people’s food,” the “poor man’s chicken,” and the “cockroach of the sea.”
“Ugh, lobster AGAIN?” said prisoners as they were handed their metal meal trays.
But perceptions began to shift. The development of the railroad system –and subsequently iced down refrigerated rail cars – allowed for lobster to be shipped inland, where it was marketed to people who had no idea that it was considered a junk food in its place of origin. They tried it and found lobster meat to be an exotic and delicious addition to their diet.
Some of lobster’s most ardent fans were moneyed New Yorkers and Bostonians who enjoyed the crustacean in luxury hotels and upscale restaurants where it was rebranded as a high-end offering. Then there were the elite trendsetters – wealthy families like the Rockefellers who served lobster to guests at their summer homes in Maine. They gave “the cockroach of the sea” an unassailable imprimatur of respectability.
As demand (and the overall population) grew, lobster became less plentiful and thus more expensive. This reinforced its status as a delicacy.
Despite a substantial dip in price during the Great Depression and World War II, canned lobster was not rationed and became a cheap source of protein for the public as well as our soldiers overseas.
As economic stability returned, lobster quickly regained its status, and today it’s as coveted as ever. Even at MANNY’S we regularly sell out of our JUMBO NOVA SCOTIA LOBSTER TAIL, which clocks in at a whopping 1¾ pounds.
Now, back to trying to hang on to summer.
Is anything better than clutching a refreshing LOBSTER ROLL on a hot summer day?
As near as I can tell, the lobster roll was created around 1920 at a restaurant in Milford, Connecticut called PERRY’S. It was lobster morsels only, drowned in melted butter.
Fast forward to 1990 in the West Village in New York when the diminutive PEARL’S OYSTER BAR was launched, followed by the equally tiny MARY’S FISH CAMP. Their versions of the lobster roll departed from the original by swapping out the drawn butter for a binder of mayo with a sprinkling of herbs and a little chopped celery. That’s it!
And that was plenty! New Yorkers could not resist. Restaurants in other cities followed suit. The gold standard for lobster rolls was established.
But CAUTION! Just like steak, good lobster is expensive, and cheap lobster is not good. So, beware of imposters – because there are many!
One trick is to add fillers like SURIMI (imitation meat paste fashioned into crab leg shapes). MONK FISH (the “poor man’s lobster”) is used as well. So is WHITING. Perhaps the most deceptive trick: replacing lobster meat with that of the LANGOSTINO, a shrimp-like crustacean related to the lobster, but more similar in appearance to a hermit crab. Its flesh isn’t just tough, it has about a third of the flavor of lobster meat.
How common is this practice? Inside Edition ran DNA tests on lobster dishes from 28 restaurants across the country and found that 35% of the samples contained cheaper seafood, such as whiting and langostino.
So if you find a lobster roll at a price that’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t true.
After all, the key to a DELICIOUS LOBSTER ROLL is the meat. All the best restaurants and lobster shacks along the New England Coast USE ONLY KNUCKLE and CLAW MEAT (firm, meaty, rich and sweet). That’s the rule at MANNY’S, PITTSBURGH BLUE and SALUT.
So, as the lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer wind down, REACH FOR A LOBSTER ROLL and – as the song goes – “Hang on Sloop, Sloopy, hang on!”
WTF