I took some major liberties with this dish that has been referred to as the national dish of Comoros. This is meant to prepared with lobsters. Even lobster tails would have been ok but I 1) could not bring myself to bring a live lobster into this house (the sound of the screams? Also of my dog? No thanks.) and 2) could have picked up lobster tails but I wasn’t feeling particularly adventurous this week and just wanted to keep things simple. I’d seen versions of this recipe floating around that referred to a vanilla cream sauce incorporating other shellfish, so I figured that might be my loophole. So I apologize to the purists out there who may say I phoned this one in. And I did, BUT, I loved this dish so in the end I think it was still the right move. Perhaps next time I’ll upgrade to lobster tails but on this weeknight, I chose some beautiful shrimp.

One important instruction on this dish that I did not skimp on was the use of vanilla bean along with extract. I was worried that it would be too much of a vanilla flavor but it was pretty subtle once added to the cream, butter and shallots. The end result was a bit like a shrimp scampi but a bit more aromatic and quite frankly, more interesting. I served over steamed spinach with a side of purple potatoes and onions.

Recipe I used: https://foreignfork.com/broiled-lobster-tail-vanilla-sauce/

Overall Level of Effort: 2

Skill Level: Beginner

Would Make It Again? Yes

Additional Notes: The only reason I made this a level “2” for effort is that it is a little cumbersome to scrape the vanilla bean seeds out of the pod but it’s more tedious than difficult.