Not Just Stew · The atlas · A working atlas of the world's cooking

Iberia · Volume 06, The Rice Coast

Caldereta de Llagosta Menorquina

Menorca, Fornells

Caldereta de llagosta menorquina, Fornells lobster stew: a rustic dark clay pot of deep orange red broth with a halved spiny lobster in its shell resting in the sauce, the shell a vivid coral red against the duller orange of the stew.

An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.

Time
Hands on 15 minutes · Waiting 3 hours
Researched
Researched from 37 sources in the brief, none yet linked in the text
Reviewed
Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
Cooked
Not yet cooked and reported

The real, recent history of this dish, prized today but genuinely a twentieth-century tourist-era invention rather than an old fisherman's recipe, is given above. It is cooked traditionally in an earthenware pot called a "tià" in Menorcan.

As tradition built it

About 15 minutes, plus a 2 to 3 hour rest.

Ingredients

Method

  1. Halve the lobster lengthwise and reserve its coral.
  2. Build a sofregit of garlic, onion, red and green pepper and tomato in the tià.
  3. Pound a picada separately from the reserved coral with almonds, toasted bread and garlic.
  4. Combine the lobster and sofregit with water to cover and simmer around fifteen minutes.
  5. Stir the picada in near the end.
  6. Rest the whole dish two to three hours before serving to let the flavours settle.

What a modern chef changes

Lobster cooked sous vide, coral picada finished through a chinois

Rungs 1 and 4

Method

  1. Cook the lobster sous vide at 60°C for precisely the time its size demands (rung 1's absorption-cooking precision applied directly to a protein that overcooks in seconds in a simmering pot), keeping the flesh genuinely tender in a way the traditional method, honestly, sometimes does not manage.
  2. Build the coral picada (rung 4) in a high-power blender and finish it through a chinois for a completely smooth, sauce-like consistency rather than the traditional rustic texture.
  3. Respect the dish's traditional two-to-three-hour rest exactly as tradition demands, since nothing about modern technique improves on simply letting a good stew sit.
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