Bonus

As we were leaving the Lobster Shack, I had a brilliant idea. Do they sell lobster meat for use at home? And do they sell the excess shells?

Yes to the first question; no to the second - they use their shells to make their bisque. They do sell the picked meat, however, so I snagged half a pound of this luscious stuff and brought it home for another killer lobster meal. I like to think of it as saving energy since it means we don't have to drive back down there so soon. Yeah, right.

Anyway, we were in the mood for a salad rather than a pasta dish (wishing for spring, I think), so I set about to recreate a version of a salad that Chief Banks used to make for us back when we lived in the admiral's quarters in Pearl Harbor. When Dad retired from there, we seriously considered staging a coup and refusing to leave - the quarters were the best we'd ever had and we had loved our time in that duty station.

Chief Banks' salad was a cold curried rice salad with chunks of lobster, fresh pineapple, celery and black olives, which he served in the shell of a quartered pineapple with the spray of leaves still attached. Glorious. In Hawaii, where it's always warm, it was simply perfect, both beautiful and addictively delicious.

I actually had a fresh pineapple on hand - while I try to eat locally, every now and then something from far away calls to me, and it's often something from Hawaii. I lived there too long not to love the occasional reminder of those halcyon days. I wasn't in the mood for rice - just wanted to use the Boston lettuce in the fridge - and I was a little concerned that those flavors might overwhelm our delicate lobster, so I mixed up the confetti of ingredients in a separate bowl and called My Beloved from his football game to try it before dousing the lobster with the rest of the salad makings. He loved the mixture of tastes but agreed that it might be too much to mix in with the lobster, so I strained out the sauce that resulted from all those ingredients and mixed the lobster with that, sprinkling the chunky leftovers around the outside of the lettuce leaves to enjoy separately from the meat.

If I do say so myself, it was killer. The light, lemony curry sauce enhanced the rich meat and the hint of heat from the hot sauce we added was a piquant reminder that spicy can be good. Chief Banks would be proud.

Lobster Salad

Four butter lettuce leaves, rinsed and dried
1/2 pound fresh lobster meat
1 Tbs mayonnaise (da kine blue lid)
2 Tbs kefir
juice of 1/2 tart lemon
5 drops of jalapeño hot sauce, or to taste (Chilebrown, you listening?)
1 tsp curry powder
1/4 cup minced fresh pineapple
3 Tbs minced or sliced ripe olives (not the Euro kind for this - they are too strong)
3 Tbs minced celery
2 Tbs finely sliced green onion
1 Tbs minced red onion

Mix everything but the lettuce and the lobster together in a bowl, thinning the mayo and kefir with the lemon juice and adding the hot sauce drop by drop until it reaches the desired firepower, then adding the rest. When all are mixed, strain off the resulting "dressing" and mix that with the lobster. Distribute the dressed lobster over the lettuce leaves and sprinkle the leftover "foodfetti" around the mound of lobster meat. Dive in.