Go for the gold: Lazy Lobster!

April 6, 2022

David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. Prop Stylist: Paige Hicks.

Lazy Lobster!

By Sam Sifton

Good morning. I got it into my head that I wanted lobster for dinner. Lobster's expensive, but no more so than the chicken from the farm where they teach poultry Pilates. I hadn't had lobster in a very long time. I thought it worth the splurge.

But I didn't want to make an ordeal of it. The point wasn't to recreate a shore dinner somewhere, me in a bib cracking open shells at the table, sucking on legs, rolling corn on the cob through the juices on my plate. I wanted restaurant elegance, candlelight, luscious, buttery meat.

Enter David Tanis, with his recipe for lazy lobster (above), a lovely dinner for two (though you could easily scale it up or down) that delivers pieces of hot lobster swimming in butter, requiring no shucking at the table at all. You could steam the lobsters in the morning before work, and then assemble everything in the evening — quick work followed by dinner with sparkling wine.

No lobster where you stay? Gabrielle Hamilton's crab toast offers a similar vibe (with even more ease, since you can buy pre-picked crab at the store). So does Florence Fabricant's monkfish with caper butter.

Or you could go in an entirely different direction: beans and garlic toast in broth; savory oatmeal with greens and yogurt; eggs mayonnaise. (I've been making that last one at work, with grab-and-go hard-boiled eggs from the cafeteria, a packet of mayonnaise and sprinkles of salt and black pepper.)

You might want to give Melissa Clark's latest a try, in advance of Passover. It's a pomegranate onion and rice bake that's an easy riff on a stuffed-onion dish from the Israeli-born Los Angeles chef Shimi Aaron, famous for his babkas.

And if none of that suits you, do consider quick chicken and dumplings, roasted sausages with grapes and onions or sesame tofu with coconut-lime dressing and spinach.

There are many thousands and thousands more recipes waiting for you on New York Times Cooking, and further inspiration on our TikTok, Instagram and YouTube channels. As I mention a fair amount, you need a subscription to access them. Subscriptions support our work and allow it to continue. If you haven't yet secured one, would you consider subscribing today? Thanks very much.

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Now, it's a long way from hoe cakes and baba ghanouj, but I was intrigued by Lauren Collins's piece in The New Yorker, on the unraveling of a French expert on serial killers, undone by his fans, "connoisseurs of the self-valorizing lie."

I'm deep into the second season of "Top Boy" on Netflix (which is really the fourth, if you count "Top Boy: Summerhouse") and hope that you will join me.

Here's Elizabeth Rasich's short story, "A Mother in the Hand," in Hayden's Ferry Review.

Finally, those who love the New York restaurant scene won't want to miss this virtual event on Friday, April 8 at 1 p.m. Eastern: Nikita Richardson, who writes the Where to Eat newsletter, will talk to the comedian and Bronx native Desus Nice about his favorite spots, and will answer your dining-out queries with Priya Krishna. Times news subscribers can R.S.V.P. here. See you on Friday.