As the days clicked by, my sensitivity for other living things, especially those smaller and more vulnerable than my fellow Homo sapiens, intensified. I was stuck in a seafood slaughter house on Old Cape Cod, required to sacrifice the lives of as many as two-hundred harmless crustaceans every night. How magnificently designed they were, these ancient creatures, their external exoskeletons a marvel of structural genius. Had any one of them ever committed any offense against any of my tribe, so much as one vindictive thought or one single malicious act? No, never. The only reason for their execution was that they were there, in the wrong place at the wrong time – possessed of a flesh that humans savored. And somehow I had become their unwilling executioner.
If my work that summer had not including killing shellfish, I might never had been forced to address the issue. After all, I was far removed from the places where cattle fell to an ax in the name of Roast Prime Rib of Beef, where pigs were fattened with corn and slop for their Center-Cut Broiled Pork Chops (or Mock-Veal Parmigiana), or where rows upon rows of chickens were fed into a huge mechanical apparatus designed to break their necks, gut their innards and pluck their feathers for that fine Grilled Breast of Farm Fresh Chicken à la Rochambeau. I was as insensitive as anyone else who grew up in sub-urban America, half-believing that steaks, chops, and poultry originated at the supermarket and that animal flesh was unrelated to creatures who had once lived and breathed and wandered freely about.
Now, suddenly, that attitude of denial was no longer possible. I looked around the kitchen and saw myself surrounded by the mangled body parts of once-living things. I wondered if green peppers cried when pulled from the vine, or whether they felt the slice of a cook’s knife while being cut into eighths for Tenderloin of Beef Brochettes. If not for those live crustaceans, I might have remained oblivious to the fact that we must kill in order to eat, and never so much as blinked at what I was doing.
I realized I could walk out of the kitchen at that moment, pack my things and move on to the next job. That would save me from killing lobsters but it would not help the lobsters, since someone else would take my place. Besides, I’d still be dealing with dead critters in the next kitchen. Alternatively, I could return to school and seek training in another discipline, something technical as graphic design, or as high-minded as theology. But as long as I ate even the tiniest amount of flesh, I’d still be part of the problem. My personal slaughter of lobsters was but a microcosm of the vast slaughter of innocent creatures in the name of gastronomy that went on every moment all over the world. Whatever personal choice I made, East Bay Lodge would still be turning hogs into Veal Parmigiana, cattle into Châteaubriand and Steak aux Poivre, cod into Broiled Scrod, sheep into Grilled Lamb Chops, shrimp into Baked-stuffed Scampi. And this was only one restaurant in one small village at the sou th-eastern end of Cape Cod, one medium-sized restaurant in a business that in this country alone grosses nearly fifty-billion-dollars per annum.
I had met the enemy all right, and I had to do something, whatever that something might be. It was more than a search for exoneration, more than a way to assuage my feelings of guilt. I needed, somehow, to accept my personal role and responsibility in the greater picture of things. As a first step, I headed to the local library, and find out why this wonderful yet defenseless crustacean had ended up in this dreadful predicament – in my trembling, blood-stained hands.
The term lobster is a melding of the Latin locasta, meaning “locust,” and the Anglo-Saxon loppe, meaning “spider.” It is an invertebrate anthropoid, from the Latin invertebratus, meaning without an inner skeleton and spinal column. Lobsters are in fact, a specimen of inside-out anatomy, and a marvel of design. Although they lack sense organs as we know them, lobsters have a nervous system centered in their belly that uses two tiny brains – one above, and one below its throat. Their eyes contain nearly ten thousand tiny “facets,” yet appear myopic to the point of virtual blindness in the presence of light. Recent experiments indicate that their multiple eyes may be sensitive to light on a scale beyond our comprehension, and that their vision may be as acute as a hawk’s. The creature’s nocturnal habits lend credence to this theory. A lobster also has as many as 100,000 sensory hairs covering their appendages, hairs so sensitive that a lobster will react to a trail left in the water by a finger which has barely grazed a piece of meat. In other words, a lobster is a highly sensitive creature who perceives the world very differently from the way we do, but surely no less acutely.
A second cousin to the spider, the lobster also possesses the amazing ability to regenerate any part of its body. Although our bodies can heal wounds, repair internal tissue, and grow fingernails and hair, we cannot replace a limb or even a finger. But a lobster that loses a claw or leg in a fight, or to escape an enemy, will simply grow another. And during this regeneration, the growth of the rest of his body slows, to expedite the speed of replacement.
In 1622, at the recently-founded Plymouth Plantation, Governor William Bradford was mortified to realize that he had nothing to offer a newly arrived group of sixty-seven colonists except lobster “without bread or anything els but a cupp of fair water.” Early Plymouth colonists, in fact, could scarcely bring themselves to eat the frightening-looking crustaceans that were piled up in mounds on the beaches following a storm.
It wasn’t until 1840 that commercial fishing for the 100-million-year-old Homarus Americanus began. It soon became a delicacy of robber barons and businessmen on expense accounts. But the surging demand severely depleted the natural supply. From an all-time high of 130-million pounds taken in 1885, the lobster catch dropped to a low of 33-million in 1918. Conservation laws and commercial regulation brought the annual harvest back to between 70-and-80-million pounds; and in the 1980’s lobster sales averaged 40 million pounds per annum. Interestingly, most of our “Maine” lobster actually comes from Québec, Newfoundland, and Canada’s Maritime Provinces.
Man has become the lobster’s greatest enemy, not only by harvesting it for food, but also by polluting its spawning waters off the shores of Canada and the Northeastern United States. Even without human predators, however, the odds against a larval lobster surviving to the age of one year are about a million-to-one. Though a female lobster mates every two years and produces thousands of eggs, 99% die within a few weeks. The one-third-inch-long lobsterlings are preyed upon by many varieties of sea life, including their own species. They must deal with swift currents too strong for them to resist, and a score of diseases, among them a deadly blood ailment known as “red tail.”
The infant lobster who survives the first round of environmental dangers soon outgrows its external skeleton and begins to molt. As it lies on its side, the membrane which joins its body and tail splits across the back, in one clean line. The lobster then works its entire body through this split in anywhere from five-to-twenty minutes. Denuded and vulnerable, it then crawls into a protective burrow where it stays until its jelly-like new shell calcifies. This process takes several weeks, and when the growing young lobster emerges, it is 50% heavier and 7-to-20% longer than when it began. During its first year of life, a lobster will molt anywhere from seven-to-ten times, to keep up with its growth. If it manages to survive that year, the odds against its continued survival have been reduced from a million-to-one, to ten-thousand-to-one.
The official record for the largest lobster ever captured is a forty-two-pound, seven-ounce monster caught off the Massachusetts coast in 1934. Measuring three-feet in length, its mounted shell is on display at the Boston Museum of Science. A forty-seven pounder was reputedly caught off the Virginia Capes in 1935, and Maine lobstermen report seeing some as large as one-hundred pounds. But it is generally agreed that anything larger than two-and-a-half pounds tends to be too tough for use as food, and anything in excess of twenty pounds is too large for the average lobster trap.
This was all fascinating information, but it did little to solve my dilemma or soothe my conscience. A Canadian biologist claimed that a lobster lac
ks the physiological equipment to suffer. Easy for him to say, I concluded, given the fact that two out of three lobsters sold in the United States is harvested from Canadian waters and that Canadian canners use baby lobsters well below the minimum size specified in Maine’s conservation law. The Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has recommended anesthetizing live crustaceans in a mixture of one-pound of salt dissolved in two-quarts of cold water, after which they can be boiled without visible signs of discomfort. This seemed to me the ultimate oxymoron – an organization dedicated to preventing animal cruelty recommending a technique of cooking a live crustacean.
Dr. Robert Bayer, of the University of Maine, who studied lobster for more than 15 years says, “They don’t really have a brain [but] a decentralized nervous system like a large insect.” That they twitch when tossed into boiling water is probably an “involuntary response.” On the other hand, Dr. Jelle Atema, a professor with the Boston University Marine Program at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, studied them for two decades and came to a very different conclusion. Though he has found no effective way to measure the lobster’s capacity for pain, he considered them “remarkable, sophisticated creatures,” who live in groupings of twenty-to-thirty individuals, which Atema called “villages,” and who, when wounded, emit a chemical that serves as a warning signal to the other inhabitants of its “village.”
I also found several recommended methods for sparing the lobster pain during preparation. The two most common involved severing its external spinal cord, which all agreed would numb sensitivity. One method was to make an incision at the back of the head, just below a spot directly between the eyes. The other was severing the animal at the vulnerable spot directly between the main body, the carapace, and the top of the tail. I was more taken with a gentler alternative, suggested by notable gourmand Samuel Chamberlain, who seemed as sensitive as I, to the plight of Homarus Americanus. Chamberlain advocated placing the lobster in a pot of cold water, turning on the flame, and allowing the water come to a boil. Subjected to a gradual rise of water temperature, the creature would be slowly lulled to sleep, and thus avoid the shock and pain of being plunged directly into rapidly boiling water.
At last, I had found someone with the lobster’s best interest at heart. The next day, I tried his technique. I lifted a pound-and-a-half lobster out of a crate, apologized to it, then placed it into a pot of cool water. I turned on the fire, and observed the lobster’s movements as the temperature increased. To my horror, the poor creature began squirming and twitching in obvious torment. I quickly grabbed a pair of tongs, pulled him out of the water, and set him down on the counter. Oh, my heart, my poor wretched soul. The poor creature just sat there, looking kind of dazed and confused, resided somewhere between life in the beautiful deep blue sea, and death at the hands of a guilt-ridden cook. I was more horrified than irritated at Chamberlain’s naive hypothesis, which he had obviously never tested. All I could do now was put the poor creature out of its misery. I picked up a large knife, apologized again, and then “whack!,” right between the carapace and the top of the tail.
Having worn out the resources of the library, my search for answers took me to the beach. Within hours, I would be back in the slaughterhouse, dealing death to innocent lobsters. I couldn’t walk away from the dilemma, no matter how traumatic it had become. I had to find a solution, something to get me through the summer. I strolled along the ocean’s edge, feeling the waves crash onto the beach – mellow, serene, confident. Some lines from Walt Whitman rattled around the brain cells:
“The earth does not argue,
Is not pathetic,
Has no arguments,
Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
Makes no discriminations,
Has no conceivable failures.”
The ocean’s edge is a special place. It’s circular ebb and flow never ceases, never stops to rest – a reflection of a higher power perhaps. I snickered, reflecting that whatever higher power had manifested this magnificent planet and had sovereignty over it has more important matters to attend to than the dilemmas of a wet-behind-the-ears cook-philosopher pondering the tainted sea-blood dripping from his hands. How had we arrived at this ungodly state, where hapless creatures were sacrificed to seasonal revenues, the “bottom line,” and nostalgic Cape Cod fare? Yet there seemed no way to avoid it. It was a law of nature, it seemed. The big fish that swallows the smaller fish is then eaten by the bigger fish, and so on up the line. Humans are hardly the ultimate predator in the chain of life on this planet. What big fish will devour us? Perhaps in our destructiveness, we will devour ourselves.
But all that was avoiding the issue, allowing my peculiar Virgo-nature to dissect every detail to distraction. I still needed to find a way to deal with my dreadful dilemma. If God meant lobster to be boiled and served to the restaurant dining public in this place and in this time, then there must be a reason for it. A Stevie Wonder lyric danced in my head: Till I reach, till I reach my higher ground. A prayer, perhaps, a prayer for each creature as it moves to its higher ground. A mantra, repeated at each execution, something to move its spirit on to the next plane. I remembered a Buddhist prayer I had once shared with a close friend whose young son had died prematurely: “A thing that lives once, lives always,” I told him. Being part of the food chain was a condition of our existence, but so was the continuity of life. I breathed deeply, and headed back to the slaughter house.
That evening, the first lobster order came in. Malcolm made a move towards the lobster crate. I intercepted him, coolly: “I’ll get it.” He starred at me for a few seconds, sensing something different in my eyes and voice. “Sure man. You get it.” He stepped back, paused for a moment then went back to work. I picked up a lobster. The creature flapped its tail violently, and stretched out his claws in an effort to defend itself. I carried it solemnly to my cutting board, curled its tail back underneath, and held it firmly down onto the board. I paused, momentarily, with the point of the knife hanging directly above its carapace, near the head, below and directly between its two eyes, then I murmured softly, “A thing that lives once, lives always.” The knife came down swiftly, piercing the hard shell, making a “squish” as it cut through the creature’s head and nervous system. I could almost feel the life move out of it. I picked it up, carried it over to the kettle and dropped it in. Malcolm stared at me from the other side of the room. The kitchen was unusually quiet that night. But production ran smooth as silk.
Boiled Lobster
In a large pot, bring to boil 4 gallons (15 liters) water, with 1 tablespoon (15 mL) of salt. While silently pronouncing the mantra “A thing that lives once lives always” – pierce each 1½-to-2 pound (¾-to-1 kg) lobster swiftly, using the point of the French knife, at the point exactly between the lobster’s two eyes. Drop the lobsters into the boiling water then cover the pot. When the water returns to a boil, turn off the heat and allow to sit 10 minutes. Remove the lobster from the water, and allow to drain. Crack the claws, using the heel of a knife, and split the tail. Observe a moment of silence to thank the lobsters for donating themselves to your highest good. Serve with melted butter, lemon wedges and sprigs of parsley.
Chapter 6
Paying Dues Pays Off
Undaunted in the aftermath of the Duck Galantine-cum-Meatloaf Ordeal, it wasn’t long before an inspiration possessed me for upgrading the hot offerings of the Sunday buffet. I approached Manager Ricci.
“I’ve been thinking about the Sunday buffet,” I told him, “and I’ve thought of something that might attract more patronage.”
“Yeah what?,” he replied, in his usual compassionate, caring, and fully attentive style – with appropriate body language.
I ignored his tone. “We could publicize an international series, and each Sunday we’d offer items from a different international region. One week it might be Northern Italian, the next Swiss, then Indian, German, Scandinavian, and so on. I think it could draw people who migh
t not ordinarily come to our buffet, attracted by the regional and ethnic theme. What do you think?”
“I’ll talk it over with the chef,” he replied, in his usual compassionate, caring, and fully attentive style.
That night after work, and in the days that followed, I researched possible ethnic menus during early morning trips to the library. I soon compiled complete buffet menus representing Austria, China, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Scandinavia, Spain, and Switzerland. Most of the items were fairly well known standards – Aveglemeno and Moussaka from Greece, Stracciatella and Baked Ziti from Italy, Gazpacho and Paella from Spain. But my favorite menu, and the one I believed would be most enthusiastically received, was the Chinese.
East Bay Lodge Proudly Presents: The Cuisine of China
Ten Vegetable Soup
Stir Fried Cabbage and Mushrooms
Roast Pork, Canton Style
Crispy Fried Duck
Sweet and Sour Wontons
Peas Fried Rice
Seven Vegetable Chop Suey
Pickled Root Vegetables
Toward the end of the week, Ricci came to me with the news I had hoped to hear. The chef would allow me to orchestrate the production of one of the menus and authorized me to order necessary food supplies. I compiled my requisition list and started planning the upcoming week’s schedule, so that all would flow smoothly. I talked the project up with the other members of the brigade, and while I didn’t encounter too much enthusiasm, I expected it would come. After all, this was not some solitary project like the galantine, but an opportunity for all staff to participate in the creation of something new and tantalizing, something that would attract more business and show the Cape Cod restaurant what a progressive bunch of hot-shot cooks we were.
Have Blade Will Travel: The adventures of a traveling chef Page 8