#PugadBaboy: Lobster Ceviche

Note: all these dishes, especially the ceviche and sashimi, require the freshest lobsters you can get. Challenge your fishmonger if their lobsters can bitch-slap you with their tails.

Lobster Ceviche

Ingredients

• 1 lobster (can be sourced at Seaside Market, Macapagal Blvd.)
• 4 sweet dalanghita, juiced
• 8 kalamansi, juiced
• 1 teaspoon dayap zest
• 1/2 cup coconut milk (kakang-gata)
• 4 shallots (Lasuna onion), sliced thin
• 1 ripe mango
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
• 3 bird’s-eye chilies (siling labuyo)
• 1 avocado
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 young coconut (mala-uhog)-halved to be used as serving bowls) plantain chips as spoons

Directions

1. Twist the head off the lobster. Cut the tail lengthwise, and scoop the meat on a cutting board (remove the black vein running across the tail.) Pound the claws with a wooden mallet and try getting the meat in one piece. Scoop the lobster “mustard” from the head into a metal bowl.
2. Cut the lobster meat (keep the claw meat whole,) into bite-sized pieces and place in the metal bowl. Let the bowl sit on a bed of ice.
3. Pour the Dalanghita and Kalamansi juice, add shallots, dayap zest, siling labuyo, coconut milk, half the cilantro and season with salt and pepper. Mix gently, cover with cling wrap and refrigerate while preparing the avocado and mango.
4. Cut the mango cheeks including the meat from the seed. Score the cheeks before spooning out the flesh. Dice the rest of the mango. Cut the avocado and throw the pit at your garden (if it germinates, you’ll have your own tree!) Do the same as with the mango–score before scooping to make perfectly diced fruit. Throw the mango seed at the roof of your neighbor who sings karaoke every. single. friggin’ night.
5. Take the bowl from the refrigerator and add the mango and avocado. Toss (flip the bowl repeatedly) so you do not bruise the fruits then scoop portions into halved coconut shells. Stick a few plantain chips at the sides of the coconut bowl for scooping the ceviche.
6. Garnish the servings with whole claw meat.
7. Break the remaining cilantro leaves with your fingers over the ceviche then drizzle with sesame oil.

Serves two (dalawa lang ‘yung claws, Floyd.)

Lobster Sashimi

Ingredients

• 1 lobster
• Juice of 7 kalamansi
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• Finger-sized fresh wasabi root
• Banana leaf

Directions

1. Scoop out lobster meat, cut into bite -sized pieces and arrange onto a banana-leaf plate.
2. With a hand grater, mince wasabi root and scrape into a dipping saucer with soy sauce.
3. Squeeze the kalamansi on a separate saucer.
4. How to eat sashimi the “filipino way”: Dip fingers that will handle the sashimi in kalamansi. Dip sashimi in soy sauce, eat it then lick your fingers.
5. Invite your karaoke neighbor over and flick kalamansi juice into his eyes. If he screams in pain, flick wasabi into his mouth.
6. Tell him to stop singing “Chiquititta.”

Grilled Lobster
Ingredients

• 1 lobster
• 10 cloves minced garlic
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 cup spring onions chopped (some cut into sprigs)
• 2 pieces mild finger chili (siling-pansigang) chopped
• 1 Philippine lime
• Salt and pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to grill. Prepare a rack on a baking pan.
2. In a bowl, mix butter, minced garlic, spring onions, and finger chili with a wooden spatula. Mix thoroughly. Cover with plastic wrap and reserve.
3. Using a cleaver, butterfly the lobster straight down the middle of the softer underside of the shell to the head. Cut the meat down the center without cutting all the way through. Insert a barbecue stick (bamboo skewer) down the lobster tail so the tail remains straight. Brush with olive oil and season with salt and pepper, to taste.
4. Crack the shells of the claws. Place the whole lobster, belly up on the rack.
5. Grill in oven until the shell turns red and the flesh turns translucent.
6. Pull out of the oven and spoon the prepared butter mixture over the lobster (and into the cracks of the claws’ shells). Return to oven and when the garlic becomes fragrant, it’s done!
7. Garnish with spring onion sprigs and serve with Philippine lime wedges.
8. All these lobster dishes are best as pulutan with tequila. Remember: lick, sip, and suck–lick salt, sip tequila, and suck a wedge of lime (or a finger dipped in kalamansi.) But don’t worry, after half a bottle, who gives a #@! about sequence?