Langouste à la Russe

Langouste à la Russe (spiny lobster glazed cold in white sauce and aspic) teaches the discipline of cold coating. Before you touch a pan, know this: the lobster and its tray must be thoroughly cold, while the chaud-froid and aspic must remain fluid enough to settle in thin, even layers. The white sauce supplies flavour and opacity; repeated coats of clear aspic give the collops their glassy sheen.

The original assumed a saucier with white fish chaud-froid and clear aspic ready from stock never off the fire, plus a garde-manger arranging ten dariole moulds and ten caviare-filled eggs. It needed no salamander, because all its finishing work is cold. Your honest equivalent is one complete home-scale Homard à la Russe (No. 961), made with a single langouste, four small moulds, four eggs, a refrigerator, and a chilled oval platter. One cook, one stove, one evening.

A langouste has no claws, so its tail must provide both the graduated collops and the diced meat for the Salade Russe. Reserve the broad, handsome slices first. The towering display cushion and tenfold repetition were brigade scaffolding and may go; the white chaud-froid, coral and chervil decoration, repeated aspic coats, moulded salad, caviare eggs, and clear jelly border are the dish and must stay. The step that decides everything is the glazing, thin coat by thin coat, with patience between them.