Cheap lobster yields a rich dish of pasta

I bought two lobsters that were on sale at H Mart in Little Ferry and tossed the cooked meat with whole-wheat pappardelle and refrigerated pesto sauce, above.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

The seed was planted by a pasta recipe I saw in the food section of The New York Times last week that urged readers to take advantage of a lobster glut and lower prices.

This summer, I bought live lobsters on sale at ShopRite for $5.99 or $6.99 a pound.

But when I stopped at H Mart in Little Ferry on Sunday, I saw a dozen live lobsters squirming on a bed of ice for only $4.79 a pound.

I asked one of fish-counter employees to give me two lobsters from a tank of water, and they weighed a total of 2.75 pounds.

The Times recipe called for ripe tomatoes, fresh basil, olive oil, garlic and shallots, but I wanted to prepare my lobster pasta with what I had on hand.

I used Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto, a refrigerated sauce from Costco Wholesale.

I had 8 ounces of 100% whole wheat Garofalo Pappardelle -- wide, thick, mouth-filling ribbons of pasta -- and a recently opened bottle of Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto from Costco Wholesale.

The refrigerated pesto is a luxurious sauce with extra-virgin olive oil and imported basil, a perfect match for the buttery lobster meat.

I boiled the lobsters in a large, covered pan for about 10 minutes, then extracted the meat from the claws and tails, and cut it into bite-size morsels.

Cooking time for the imported Garofalo pasta -- 8 minutes -- is unreliable, so I cooked it for another 2 minutes, but 3 more minutes would have been better.

The finished dish was terrific, nevertheless.

My wife likes to eat food when it's piping hot, so she heated her portion in the microwave for about 1 minute.