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Receta Lobster Cobb Salad with Buttermilk-Basil Dressing
by Monte Mathews

My first Cobb

Salad was the first of many I ate on the terrace of the Polo Lounge in the

Beverly Hills Hotel. It was irresistible

with its mosaic of ingredients that arrived at the table beautifully arranged on

the plate. The tomatoes glistened, there

was crisp bacon, diced chicken breast, hard cooked eggs, beautiful Roquefort

blue cheese and of course, this being California, a diced avocado. The lettuce – a mix of iceberg, watercress, endive

and romaine – was finely chopped—something I’d never seen before. The waiter would toss all these ingredients

together and dress the salad with a French dressing. It was so perfectly Californian and almost as

sunny. Devotees of the salad can thank the Hotel for

keeping the recipe alive because its birthplace, a Hollywood shrine if there

ever was one, closed years ago.

The Brown Derby had a guest list that

read like a Who’s Who in Hollywood.

Clark Gable proposed to Carol Lombard there. Rival gossip columnists

Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons held court there. And the place ‘starred’ in an a never-to-be forgotten episode

of “I Love Lucy” with William Holden and Eve Arden as foils for Lucille Ball’s comedy. It was actually a chain of restaurants with

branches in Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Los Feliz but the original Wilshire

Boulevard Brown Derby was the best remembered.

It was hard to forget as the restaurants were shaped like a Brown Derby

Hat.

William Frawley, Lucille Ball and Willian Holden

at The Brown Derby

Now back to the “Lucy”

episode. In it, William Holden ordered

the Cobb Salad. Legend had it that one of

the restaurant’s owners, Robert Howard Cobb, had the salad made up from

leftovers for Theater Owner Syd Grauman, of Grauman’s Chinese Theater fame, who

had had dental work done and couldn’t chew properly. The item became a regular on the menu of the

Brown Derby. And since it was always one

of my favorite things to eat, when I saw a recent article in Departures

magazine, “The Best Cobb Salad in Los Angeles”, I stood up and took

notice.

This version is

an adaptation of Chef Jeff Klein’s recipe.

Chef Klein plies his trade at The Tower Bar in the Sunset Tower Hotel,

which is down the road from the former Beverly Hills location of the Brown Derby. What Chef Klein did was to switch out the

chicken for lobster. What I did was to

go with the Chef’s switch and take it from there. I added tiny little potatoes, and corn off the

cob. While it’s not the traditional Cobb

Salad recipe, it is an ideal thing to make right now while the lettuce, corn, tomatoes

and lobsters are all at their best. One

thing I omitted, actually in error, was the crumbled blue cheese. I’d rectify this if I were you, so I’ve

included it in the recipe, if not in the photographs of the dish. The second thing I did was to serve the salad

with a Buttermilk and Basil Dressing that put some creaminess on the

salad. Now there are places where the

blue cheese component has been folded into a dressing. But I think blue cheese is a fairly

polarizing ingredient, especially in our house, so I’d leave your guests the

option.

The salad is beautiful to look at and

slightly involved but it’s worth every minute.

None of the components are hard to master. It just requires a little

forethought. I find it easiest to cook multiple

items at the same time. I bake the bacon

in the oven, make the hard-cooked eggs and boil the new potatoes all at the

same time. And I saved myself a

tremendous amount of time because Andrew sprung for cooked lobster, which

eliminated having to steam the beasts.

Even though Lobster is plentiful and relatively inexpensive, this is no

budget dish. But this was for a very

special luncheon at our house with VIP guests. While the bacon’s in the oven

and the eggs and baby potatoes are on the stove, I quartered the tomatoes, and

made the dressing. I saved slicing the avocado

for last so it wouldn’t discolor. The

Butter or Boston lettuce went on the plates and I arranged the components around

the lobster on a large platter.

Recipe for Lobster Cobb Salad

Serves 6. Takes 1 hr 15 minutes to make.

1. Pre-heat

oven to 400 degrees.

2. Put

the bacon strips on a rack and put the rack atop a sheet pan. Cook the bacon in

the 400 degree oven for 20 minutes or until crisp and brown.

3. While

the bacon is in the oven, put the potatoes in a saucepan filled with cold

water. Put them on the stove and let

them come to a boil. Boil 8 to 10

minutes. Pierce potato to check for doneness.

Drain potatoes and when cool enough to handle, cut them in half. Set aside.

4. Put

the eggs in a saucepan filled with cold water. Bring the water to a boil and

the minute it does, turn the stove off and leave the eggs in the water for 15

minutes. Empty out the water and replace

with icy cold water. Remove the

eggshells and slice the eggs into halves or quarters.

5. Now

make the Basil Buttermilk Dressing: Combine all ingredients in a blender

or food processor with the metal blade attached. Puree on high speed until smooth.

Salt to your taste. Refrigerate. You’ll

want to serve this at room temperature so pull it out of the refrigerator 15

minutes before serving.

6. Once

bacon is out of the oven, reduce heat to 350 degrees and put the corn on a

sheet pan in the oven. In 30 minutes,

remove corn and, once it is cool enough to touch, shuck it. The corn silk will come off like magic. Then strip the corn from the cob. Set aside.

7. Assemble

the salad. Put the lobster in the center of a large platter and make wedges of

ingredients surrounding it. Place several pieces of Butter lettuce on

plates. Let your guests plate their own

salads. Pass the Buttermilk Basil Dressing.