Last Saturday in Ahakista and we had three lobsters from Tommy Arundel. This time I thought I would do something different with them. On the two previous occasions we have had lobsters we had them boiled with a garlic butter sauce. This time I thought I would have a go making a soup.

In preparation I had taken a bag of fish bones and heads off the fish stall at Bantry Market.

So I started by putting these into a large pan in which I had sweated two chopped onions, garlic and a bit of chilli. I poured in a couple of pints of water and pushed in a bunch of fennel from the pier patch and seasoned it all with salt, pepper, paprika and some Pernod I found in the cupboard.

Once the stock was made I boiled the lobsters in sea water for about twenty minutes. I took them out to cool and started work on a tomato sauce; olive oil, another large finely chopped onion, loads of crushed garlic, more chilli and two tins of tomatoes.

As that bubbled away I split the lobsters picking out as much meat as I could and putting it all to one side, cracking the claws with a big heavy knife and teasing out the nuggets of pale pink meat.

I put the heads to one side and poured most of the stock into the tomato sauce. I found just the one strand of saffron in the cupboard and I put that in.

In another pan I heated some olive oil on a high heat and threw in the heads crushing them as best I could with a wooden spoon. As they seethed and spat in the heat I poured in a glass of the Pernod and flamed that off before adding the remaining cup full or so of the stock. That cooked through for five minutes and was then drained through a sieve into the tomato sauce.

I was left with a thick, unctuous, aniseedy tomato sauce which was left to bubble gently for fifteen minutes while people were assembled to eat. When all was ready the lobster meat was stirred in with some finely chopped parsley.

Eaten with croutons flavoured with Desmond Cheese.

I listened the The Allman Brother’s Band whilst making it all.

We then went to the pub. And then to another pub. In fact we went on a pub crawl. It was another late night. I wore a skirt but I am not sure that anyone noticed.