Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Meditation on Food + Lobster Avocado Panini

 


I wake up to grey and gloomy morning skies. Hello people, it’s August and day by day New York looks and feels more like Seattle. As I sip my morning tea, before heading to office, I turn to Facebook to see what the friends are up to. Nothing fights gloominess like a little vibe of friendship in the air. Well, it looks like the friends have been having some pretty swanky moments lately, and my Facebook newsfeed is overflowing with photos of glorious vacation places: Capri, Mykonos, Cuba, some more Greek islands, Sicily, Turkey, St. Tropes, even more Greek islands…

I need to stop reading Facebook with my morning tea, it is making me depressed. Perhaps switch to New York Times? But that’s how I started with Facebook at the first place -- the world has turned vile, and I cannot digest the news anymore.

I am determined to make this morning work, and it’s time to pull the big guns. No people, it’s not the power of positive thinking I have in mind, it’s the power of visualization. Many years of devoted yoga and meditation practice are finally paying off; I can visualize just about anything or virtually redirect my persona to just about any place. “Memory, Agent Starling, is what I have instead of a view,” Hannibal Lecter said to Clarice in The Silence of the Lambs.

Sometimes my visualizations involve a beautiful place in a beautiful moment. Like a sunset on an empty beach on a small island, when the last moments of sunlight produce explosion of red hues across the horizon. Sometimes my visualizations involve food. Like a lobster. This meditation is also know to produce the red hue explosion.





I go to work and meditate on my lobster intensely. I meditate through a series of meetings and one to two project reviews. As soon as the meetings are over, I speed down the Taconic back into the city and set on turning the vision into reality. Being in a highly spiritual moment, today I will not attempt to kill the lobster myself. Instead, I park at the Chelsea Market, run to The Lobster Place, and soon I am on my way home with my mediation in the shopping bag.

Three hours later, I still have not eaten my lobster. I first arranged the table for the photo shoot. I then conducted the photo shoot. Next, I downloaded and reviewed the photos. Once the photo shoot was over, I cleaned the table and the kitchen. I proceeded to set up the table for my glamorous dinner. I then cleaned the apartment to make it fit for my glamorous dinner. I took a shower to make myself glamorous for my glamorous dinner. When I finally made it to my glamorous table, I did not feel glamorous anymore, I just felt tired.

So I packed up my lobster and shipped it to the fridge.

The day later, it made for a very glamorous panini.





Lobster Avocado Panini

* 1 cup chopped lobster meat
* About 4 tablespoons sour cream
* 1/2 teaspoon chopped tarragon
* 1 avocado, halved and sliced into 1/4 inch thick slices
* 4 thick slices of Jarlsberg or Emmentaler (or perhaps 8 thin ones)
* Four 3/4 inch thick slices of peasant bread (or two small ciabatta rolls, split in half)

* Salt and pepper


1. In a small bowl, mix the lobster meat with 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons of sour cream, tarragon, salt and pepper.  

2. Preheat your cast iron grill pan over medium heat. Once the pan is hot, brush it with a tiny bit of vegetable oil (I use sunflower).  

3. Brush the inside of each piece of bread with the remaining sour cream. Place the avocado slices onto the bottoms of each piece of bread, spoon the lobster salad over the avocados, top with the cheese and close.  

4. Place your sandwich in the pan, and press it with a panini press or heavy pan to weigh it down. Cook until golden and crisp, about 3 minutes per side.



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