The Caribbean · Volume 14, The First Free Kitchen in the Americas
Lambi
Coastal Haiti
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 3 hours
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Lambi
About 3 hours.
Ingredients
An outline, not yet a recipe: the tradition's method with its ingredients named but not weighed. Quantities are being added from sources inside the tradition, lead dishes first.
- conch meat, skinned and filleted thin
- citrus, for cleaning
- onion
- garlic
- celery
- bell pepper
- tomato
- thyme
- parsley
- bay
- cayenne
Method
- Skin and fillet the conch meat thin, then clean thoroughly in citrus, a genuine technical necessity for both odour and tenderising, not a garnish step.
- Build a Creole sauce of onion, garlic, celery, bell pepper, tomato, thyme, parsley, bay and cayenne.
- Simmer the conch in the sauce gently for 2.5 to 3 hours, a genuinely long cook, documented specifically because conch toughens badly if flash-cooked hot and fast rather than given the long, gentle exposure this method provides.
What a modern chef changes
Fixed Sous Vide Temperature Replacing the Long Simmer
Rung 6
Method
- Cook the cleaned conch sous vide at a controlled, moderate temperature for an equivalent long duration, removing the guesswork of watching a stovetop pot for three hours and guaranteeing the same tenderness every time, rather than a texture that depends on how closely the pot was watched.
- Reduce the Creole sauce separately to a genuinely concentrated base while the conch cooks, then combine the two only at the point of serving, so the sauce's own reduction is not limited by how long the conch itself needs.