We were sitting in the back room of the Montreal restaurant Joe Beef not so long ago, eating the first shrimp of the season, when the waiter told us to dip the meat into a tureen of lobster butter. It was a dark and clouded sauce, slightly yellow, slightly green. We dipped and ate — sweet shrimp meat against deep salinity and velvet sauciness — and it was like hearing a summer anthem for the very first time, addictive from the start. We dipped everything in lobster butter that night. We’re still at it now, and will be through Labor Day.
Summer cooking is different from the kitchen shenanigans we get into during the rest of the year. We discover flavors, or methods, and we hit repeat on their excellence, again and again. We get into grooves. We use just a couple of techniques and ingredients and we stick with them, as long as we can, because the ingredients are awesome and the techniques don’t mess with their perfection.
This summer, I’d like to propose, should be all about lobster butter — more easily made than its lushness suggests — along with a few other easy, versatile flavor enhancers that can improve most everything they touch. Each summer’s hit song has a hook that makes it irresistible. These insta-sauces and spice rubs and marinades are our culinary version of those: recipes to lift main dishes that are otherwise simply cooked.
So we’ll use the lobster butter for shrimp, fish, clams and mussels, as a mix-in for spaghetti, and probably for corn when it comes. It is as simple as anything to prepare. Steam some lobsters and enjoy them, then harvest the shells to roast down and bubble with a pound or more of unsalted butter, like a stock made with fat instead of water.
Too much effort for you? We’ll take those high-fat European butters they sell at the fancymart and make some simple compound butters as well, for use on steaks and fish and vegetables.
We’ll have a good dry rub on hand, too, to coat the cheap supermarket steaks of summer, big London broils to feed a crowd. And we’ll mix up a strong, Italianate marinade to use on chicken, pork, beef, lamb or venison. The flavor is retro-regional, a nod to the skewered spiedies of upstate New York. We’ll use it when we want to grill skewered meats for dinner, which is something (the forecast says) we will want to do a lot.
Photo
Credit
Melina Hammer for The New York Times
Compound Butter
A mixture of butter and other ingredients makes a compound butter, which can be used as a topping for cooked meat, vegetables or fish.
A classic variety is maître d’hôtel butter, which uses thyme and lemon juice as flavoring agents. But a cilantro-and-lime-juice compound butter is a marvelous thing to apply to fish, and you can even think of adding a tiny dice of jalapeño. Lemon-basil is terrific as well; you can add some garlic to that and omit the shallots. Some cooks take maître d’hôtel butter and add Roquefort cheese as a topping for steak.
Compound butter is a theme on which to improvise. The following recipe provides the basics.
This is a Yankee take on the classic French recipe for beurre de homard, which incorporates cooked lobster meat into a compound butter. It is thriftier, using the shells instead of the lobster meat to bring flavor, but is no less delicious for that. The process is akin to making a lobster stock, with butter in place of water. Use the lobster butter as a melted dip for shrimp or yet more lobster, or as a topping for sautéed scallops or fish.
Here is a rub that provides a fast, flavorful coating for barbecue: beef, pork, chicken, lamb, venison. It calls for the process known as indirect grilling, in which you build a fire on one side of your grill and cook on the other, so that the meat is never in direct contact with flame. (If you grill this rub directly, the sugar and spices will burn rather than melt into appetizing darkness.)
The recipe is forgiving. You might add granulated onion or garlic powder, or omit the coriander if you don’t have any. Be careful with the paprika, as there are so many different varieties afoot: If it’s smoked, you’ll need less; if it’s fiery, you may need less cayenne. No cayenne? Use red pepper flakes. Adjust the seasonings to your taste, then apply liberally.
Spiedies — grilled skewers of meat marinated in what amounts to Italian dressing — are a culinary mainstay of bars and roadhouses in and around Binghamton, N.Y. What follows is a recipe for the marinade used to prepare them for the fire.
I have used fresh herbs, though dried ones are more traditional, and have raised the flavor slightly with lemon zest. Once you’ve made the marinade, simply cut the meat (chicken or beef, lamb or pork) into 1- or 2-inch cubes, and submerge it in the liquid for a couple of days, covered, in the refrigerator. All that lemon and vinegar does some work on the meat. And the result, when grilled over charcoal for four or five minutes a side, is a fantastical taste of upstate New York, and a very simple and excellent dinner besides. Serve with torn mint and an additional drizzle of lemon juice and olive oil, on top of Italian bread or alongside rice.