Dressed (lobster) for dinner

This was the tin that started it all off really. I was amazed when I saw it on the shelves of the Tesco Express just round the corner from where I work. Lobster...in a tin? That most luxurious and expensive of foodstuffs, usually served up as lobster thermidor, here encased in aluminium and displayed alongside the common old tins of tuna and salmon? It sounded so unlikely that I knew instantly I had to try it. I loved the fact also that it was not just lobster but “Dressed Lobster” - it immediately made me think of a dapper old crustacean done up to the nines in top hat and tails, arriving for a dinner at which it was to be the guest of honour...of sorts.

(From an Australian menu from the 1950s)

And at only 98p, it seemed like a bargain that couldn’t be turned down - a little bit of luxury for a fraction of what you might pay for lobster in a restaurant. Of course, a quick bit of maths later on proved that it wasn’t quite the bargain I had thought - it’s a very small tin, containing only 43g, so at 98p that actually works out at about £23 per kilo: probably quite comparable to normal wholesale prices for lobster, if not somewhat more expensive. Maybe that’s why it comes in its own little cardboard box - to make it look a little more substantial than it really is. He’s a canny one, that John West (pun intended).

That said however, out of its box the tin is so dinky that it does have an air of luxury about it, like the jars of caviar you see in posh delis which still cost a bloody fortune despite being absolutely tiny. So it was with a great sense of anticipation that I pulled back the lid of the diminutive tin to reveal...an oddly orange mass inside, which wasn’t really what I was I was expecting. For some reason I had in mind that I was going to find chunks of beautiful white lobster, as if freshly picked from the shell - but of course this is dressed lobster, where the flesh has all been removed, mashed and seasoned. Quite what gives it the orangey colour though is unclear from the ingredients - lobster (93%), sunflower oil, wheat flour, salt, citric acid, spice. No clue as to what the “spice” might be - perhaps John West keeps his blend of spices as secret as Colonel Sanders does for his famous fried chicken. Paprika, maybe?

 

Anyway, I decanted the lobster from the tin and served it up on a toasted potato cake with a squeeze of lemon, a grind of black pepper and some lettuce on the sides. Which in my somewhat blurred photo makes it vaguely reminiscent of some kind of mutant crab, which is almost quite fitting.

I think I’ve only ever had lobster once before so I can’t claim to be very familiar with its taste, but this certainly had that same characteristic sweet, rich flavour of shellfish like crab or scallops, offset nicely by the lemon juice.  I would have liked a bit more of a chunky texture to it too - my expectation of pieces of flesh may have been wrong, but for me the lobster felt a little too processed. The portion may have been small, but the richness of it meant that as a light snack it was sufficient, and could probably be turned into a main meal if you stirred it through some pasta with a bit more oil and lemon, or something like that. There was no discernible note of any particular ‘spice’ to it all though - Captain West’s blend is clearly a more subtle one than the Colonel’s. While perhaps not finger-lickin’ good, all in all the dressed lobster was a tasty enough entree to the world of tinned delights.