Velouté de Homard au Paprika

Velouté de Homard au Paprika (silken lobster soup warmed with paprika) teaches extraction. The shell must give everything it has before cream enters the pot, and the paprika must warm the lobster without bullying it. Bloom the spice briefly in fat, then meet it promptly with liquid; scorched paprika turns bitter, and cream cannot hide it.

The original assumed a saucier, a stockpot never off the fire, and a mortar with a tamis, a drum sieve, for pounding and passing the shells. At home, a sturdy pot, kitchen shears, a rolling pin, a fine sieve, and good unsalted shellfish stock do the same honest work. This version keeps the source proportions of one medium lobster, two concassed tomatoes, two roughly chopped onions, two spoonfuls of rice, and one of pimento, then scales the finished soup to about two quarts. Repeated passings and the open-flame flourish are brigade scaffolding and can go; shell browning, wine reduction, paprika, roux, and the Cleveland liaison, the egg-yolk-and-cream binding finish, are the dish and stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The finished velouté should be coral-ivory, glossy enough to catch the light, with tender lobster dice, grains of rice, and red pimento appearing in every ladleful. The step that decides the pot is the shell extraction: simmer gently, crush firmly, and press for liquor without forcing gritty shell paste through the sieve.