Isabella Blow wearing her lobster hat.
I haven’t cooked lobster in quite a while. It has come down in price, and you’d think that would be inspiring, and it is, but the real reason is that I’ve become incapable of bringing a live thing into my kitchen and killing it. I understand this is a sort of retro attitude, with all the farm-to-table philosophy floating around out there in foodie world (especially in Manhattan, wouldn’t you know). But I’ve become a softy, and killing has become so difficult that even waterbugs are too much for my sensitive self. And forget about the occasional mouse that’s idiotic enough to wander into this cat-filled apartment. I’ve found myself snatching them from my cat’s mouth and trying to somehow relocate them out onto the sidewalk. I’m not becoming a vegetarian. I just want someone else, like a professional butcher, to perform my carnage. Maybe it’s got something to do with years of restaurant cooking, years of drowning live eels in vinegar, plunging knives in between lobsters’ eyes, slicing the mouths off soft-shelled crabs. In the kind of quantity that was needed for restaurant service, that all left a lingering feeling of personal genocide in my culinary soul.
But I think I will prepare lobster soon, probably with spaghetti. That way I can feed a group without having to procure a lot of lobsters. And I’ll ask my lobster seller to par-steam them for me. The wimp’s way out. That way they’ll be more or less raw when I hack them up—which is necessary for sautéing unless you want a rubbery lobster—but they’ll already be dead, like the gorgeous specimen on Miss Blow’s hat, and, sadly, like the gorgeous Miss Blow herself. Art certainly has its tragic side, and when the pursuit of it becomes just too sad, I find myself having to step back and let myself be a very good home cook and not always the kitchen artist I’ve at times considered myself to be. Be a good home cook. That is my New Year’s resolution. A new lobster pasta recipe will be up shortly.
Erica De Mane 
Brilliantly funny stuff, Erica. This is some of the best of your writing that I have ever read. I so identify: I’ve massacred my share of live seafood in my day and I never liked it. Always tried to make it quick and dignified; most (all?) of the lobsters I slaughtered were probably older than me, for Chrissakes. I felt they deserved a little respect. I used to give them a last cigarette before dispatching them: take the rubber bands off their claws, stick a smoldering “Kool” in their clutch and, after a few puffs, I’d cut ’em through the gut with a big, old black carbon steel French knife I found in a shop years ago and carried with me from job to job. Damn knife held a better edge than any of the crap that’s out there now.; I think the thing was at least 75 years old. Sorry to report that it was stolen from me, with the rest of the knives I used for years; taken right out of my locker when I worked at the Bel Air Hotel, the very last cooking job I held. Anyway, the cigarette trick always got a big laugh from the waiters. Sorry, I digress where you are witty and concise. I loved this post. Keep ’em coming.
Thanks Michael.
Did you ever have to skin rabbits?
No bunny skinning for me but I’ve seen it done. When I was a kid, I had an old Italian neighbor named Jimmy Panella. Like most Italians, he kept his own garden, chickens, rabbits, etc. ( At that time, I lived in a community near Philadelphia’s Tincum swamp; basically, an undeveloped part of the city where people had larger plots of ground around their homes. )
Every so often, Mr. Panella would thin his menagerie for meat. He’s let us watch. We’d get to hold the bunnies until he slaughtered them with a big, old carving knife. He’d hang ’em upside down, decapitate them with one, clean cut and skin ’em in the same exact time it took him to light a cigarette. The other kids freaked but I dug it, figuring here was something I might need to know someday. Likewise, my most famous baby-sitter of all time, Carmella, would kill and dress her chickens on OUR kitchen table while she was baby-sitting us. I loved it but the fat bitch NEVER let us eat any of her rabbits or chickens! Neither did Mr. Panella. The food was for their own families. Even though they knew we were poor, they never shared any of this great food with us. Carmella would cook up the fresh chicken…I would watch her; she was essentially my first culinary instructor…and her dinners smelled wonderful, looked very tasty. I never got to taste so much as a friggin’ leftover! ain’t that a bitch?