Make this towering masterpiece for your next date night, and keep your cash in your wallet where it belongs. Optimised to minimise fuss – the lobster seasoning becomes the pasta sauce!

Time: 3/5
Not too bad, especially as you can do some things ahead of time and some things in parallel

Effort: 3/5
You gotta do work with some kitchen shears, but that gives you a hell of a presentation at the end

Heads or tails?

Date night should be about each other, more than it is about the cooking. That’s why I suggest you choose recipes that either let you make most of the things ahead of time (like goulash, or slow roasted lamb shanks), can cook hands-free in the background (like an Asian poached pear), or cook something that comes together very quickly (like this crab and truffle pasta).

This recipe is in the last category. Lobster is fancy, and restaurants charge an arm and a leg for it when you dine out. It’s not cheap if you cook it yourself either, but you get to pocket the profit margin and the overhead that you’d otherwise be charged by putting in some elbow grease.

Like other shellfish, lobster cooks quite quickly. And like other shellfish, lobster is a very lean protein, which gives us a lot of room for delicious garlic butter. Butter for the lobster, then the same butter for the pasta I’m serving it with – it always feels great when the components of a meal synergise!

Stack the lobster meat on the shell, then stack that onto the pasta to create height for a truly impressive presentation. Balance out all that richness with a nice fresh salad, and you got a gourmet date night dinner at a fraction of the cost.

Dramatis Personae

Served two.

Lobster tails – two half-pound tails

A lobster is 20-25% meat by weight, but about half of that meat is in the tail. It’s also where you can get the most meat with the least work, so you get a lot of bang for your buck when you buy just the tails. 

This vendor says their 6-7oz tails weigh 3-4oz once shelled, and after having cooked lobster tails myself I’d say that’s about right. So if you’re tracking calories or your protein, a half-pound tail is about a quarter pound of meat.

Oh, and nothing stops you from keeping the shells to make some lobster stock with. Fry briefly in a bit of oil until fragrant, cover with water and simmer for about 10 minutes to get every bit of flavour for your money’s worth.

Tagliatelle – 150g

Again, probably a lot less carbs than what other people would serve. Gotta make space for the butter, and let’s not forget dessert. I try to think of pasta as a flavour delivery vehicle rather than a staple food, and instead rely on a big salad for satiety.

Because the pasta’s mission is to hang on to sauce, I prefer tagliatelle to spaghetti for the flat shape. All that surface area for not so much volume means more sauce can hang on each noodle.

Butter – 4 tablespoons

A lot more than I would normally use in a recipe, but a lot less than what you’d probably see elsewhere. I’m trying to live a little without pigging out, and it’s a balance I’m still exploring.

Garlic – a couple cloves, minced as finely as possible

Flavours the butter, which goes on to flavour both the pasta and the lobster tails. Be careful not to burn the garlic, to avoid acrid flavours from developing. All they need is a gentle sizzle to coax that delicious aroma out of them.

Smoked paprika – 1 teaspoon

More for colour than anything, because my paprika is very old – I don’t cook non-Asian food often enough to go through my paprika before it goes stale. But that’s fine because visual appeal is a big part of making food feel fancy, and it’s very little effort to bloom some paprika in melted butter for the appearance upgrade it gives.

Salt, pepper and lemon juice – to taste

With the butter and the garlic already involved, you don’t need much more to make some fantastic lobster. Maybe a light sprinkle of paprika for some colour, but I wouldn’t go much further than that in terms of herbs and spices.

Salad mix – about 1lb

Nothing fancy here, just something from the supermarket with a simple dressing of olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper whisked together using a tiny dab of mustard as an emulsifier to hold things together.

There’s nothing wrong with using store bought dressing either. Remember, date night is about the people more than the food –  if you already have to stress about getting the lobster and the pasta right, it helps to not have to worry about the salad too.

Instant potato soup – 2 servings

The lady boss likes soup, dinner gets served with soup. Reconstituted as per packet instructions. No shame in store bought ingredients! Although, soup is one of those things that you can easily make ahead and just leave it on the back burner without any appreciable deterioration in quality. So that’s something you can do for extra brownie points.

Executive summary

1. Preheat oven at 200C/400F, and bring a pot of water to boil.
2. Wash and drain salad mix. Make dressing. Mince garlic.
3. Melt butter in a large skillet on low heat. Add garlic and stir occasionally, until fragrant.
4. Using a pair of kitchen shears, cut along the top shell of each lobster tail.
5. Carefully remove the meat from the shell, but leave it attached to the tail. Lift the meat through the cut you made, and lay it on top of the shell.
6. Brush butter onto lobster tails. Salt and pepper the lobster, then roast on the top rack for 10-12 minutes on 200C/420F.
7. While lobster is in the oven, boil pasta in salted water until al dente. Dress the salad while waiting, and do some cleanup.
8. Once pasta is done, drain and add to the remaining garlic butter. Toss to combine, along with a bit of reserved pasta water.
9. Assemble and serve.

Play by Play

Last things first. Let’s get the salad dressing out of the way – a bit of mustard and vinegar, pinch of salt and pepper, lots of olive oil, whisk together until thickened. It can sit there until we’re ready to dress.

Garlic, as finely minced as your patience allows.

Here’s where you do as I say and not as I do. The melted butter and the pan has enough residual heat to sweat the garlic. If you don’t switch the heat off before the garlic is where you want it to be, it will continue to brown and overshoot the mark.

This is the trickiest bit. Cut the lobster shell open along the back with a pair of kitchen shears. You’ll also cut into the meat as you do so, which is fine because we’ll be butterflying the flesh later.

Behold the transformation! Lay the meat on top of the shell, and spread it out along the slit we cut. Wait until after the buttering to season, so the salt and pepper will stick onto it better.

Into the filthy crime scene of an oven we go. If I were to do this again, I would place a layer of parchment paper between the lobster and the foil. The tails ended up sticking to the foil a little – not enough to cause problems, but enough to cause a scare.

While messing with the lobster tails, the pasta water has come to a boil. Now that the lobster is safely in the oven, I can focus my attention on the pasta. Toss pasta in the leftover garlic butter once al dente.

There was a quiet moment when neither the lobster or the pasta needed my attention. I took this opportunity to dress the salad, although of course you could leave it until the end.

12 minutes later. Does that look good or what? Curiously, the overhanging meat shielded parts of the shell from the upper heating element, so the shell isn’t as pink as I would have liked. But these will still be super impressive after playing up.

Ta-dah! Leaning into the height for visual impact was definitely the right move. A few drops of lemon juice brings out the best of this dish – get some onto the pasta too.

I baked my tails for 12 minutes, but wish I did it for 10. The inside was sweet and tender, but the outside was starting to get tough. Nobody’s complaining with a mouth full of lobster though.

Lobster is nice and all, but I’d argue that the buttery, garlicky mountain of carbs underneath the shellfish is where it’s really at. This was easily my favourite part of the meal. Not surprising, considering how much I love buttery garlicky carbs with seafood. Bon appetit!

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