The lobster

Ramon Cavaller/El Iris 1978 - When I said - in a conference at the Salón Consell de Cent in Barcelona City Hall - that through the transparent and blue sea of ??our Island the red lobsters could be seen like bunches hanging in the depths, on the rocks, it was a poetic license.

Lobsters are difficult to catch.

You don't see them. Now - with the season open - you have to leave the traps very deep. And if the sea is calm and they don't get lost, you have to go back the next day to collect such precious pieces.

Not many years ago they were ignored. I have a manuscript on Menorcan gastronomy dated 1832 and there is no recipe in it, no reference to lobster. As now, neither in the houses nor in the restaurants of Menorca are sea urchins ("Vogama-rins") offered as a starter or as an accompaniment to the appetizer, so appreciated in Europe that, during the last civil war, a seaplane took off full of them bound for the "gourmets" of France, from the port of Fornells.

In these times of tourism and high standard of living on the island, the Caldera de Langosta is almost consubstantial with the Island. One of our best propaganda and business promotion weapons.

Its recipe, which they say is perfect, is known to almost everyone. But the old fishermen have always advised me to prepare it just right, to choose male lobsters that weigh more than two kilos.

Try it. And then you tell me.