Citrus Grilled Lobster Tail -- Thursday Night Smackdown

Michelle, over at Thursday Night Smackdown has a First Thursday challenge. Yesterday was the first Thursday of the month, and the theme was The Grill. The challenge is to pick a recipe you've never tried, using the theme, and bang it out. As usual for our First Thursday challenge, Christey and I switched roles -- I shot the photos, and Christey cooked (though she edited the photos and I'm writing the post). Christey was paging through cookbooks and magazines last week, looking for a recipe. I had the July Saveur out, as I was still doing the gravlax thing, and she said, "Oooh! Citrus grilled lobster tails!" and pointed out the recipe to me.

"That's not a recipe from the magazine, it's an ad for Frei Brothers wine," I said.

"Who cares? It's a recipe, and it's lobster on the grill!"

"You have a good point," I said.

So, for Christey's very first grilling experience as chef, we present to you the Frei Brothers winery recipe of Grilled Lobster Tail, with Salad and Citrus Dressing:

Instead of buying lobster tails, I went for the whole lobster, since they were a surprisingly great price for Florida, and I wanted to use the claw meat for another recipe (coming soon!). After disassembling and chilling the tails, they needed to be sliced in half, lengthwise. It's tricky cutting through two layers of shell in the best situations, and these tails were still a little unconvinced that they should behave and play dead. But, the deed was done:

The lobster was to be marinaded with the salad dressing, so Christey moved on to that. 1 tsp of orange zest, 1/4 cup squeezed orange juice, and 1 tablespoon lime juice.

Add about 1/3 cup olive oil, some salt, and pepper, and whisk well

Since the lobster only takes about 6 minutes to cook, Christey started the salad as well. She sliced a cuke, thin-sliced 1/4 red onion, and added some mixed greens, but waited until plating before adding the dressing.

The grill was started, and Christey basted the lobsters with the citrus dressing. On the grill, the lobsters started shell-side down for about 4 minutes, then were flipped meat-side down for about 2. That's really all it took.

The dressing on the salad, then plating: Two tails surrounding the salad, and it was time to dig in!

Deconstruction: We both agreed the dressing was a little bland. I squirted a shot of champagne vinegar in to see if that would help, and it brightened it up a lot. Similarly, the lobster might have done with a dressing basting after it came off the grill. The lobster meat was amazingly, wonderfully grill-tasting and tender, but no real zing.

I'm sure it would have been perfect with a Frei Brothers Chardonnay, but it's kind backward to devise a recipe to match a particular wine, instead of picking a wine to go with a recipe. We didn't have a Frei Brothers Chardonnay on hand, so we enjoyed our lobster tails with an ice-cold bottle of Kirin Light.