Look, if you follow Gordon Ramsay’s career and his cooking closely, you’re probably not very surprised at the title — every dish he touches turns into a gourmet affair one way or another. But it’s still fun to watch how he turns a basic recipe into something Michelin-resto-worthy every time. So, today, a potato salad gets the celebrity chef treatment with extra lobster and caviar.
In an episode of “The F Word,” a cooking series hosted by Gordon that ran from 2005 to 2010, he showed us how he made a serving of lobster paired with caviar and some perfectly crisp potatoes. The dish begins with two tails pulled fresh off two lobsters. They’re tied with strings to prevent them from curling in the heat (straight lobster tails make for a far more eye-pleasing dish). The lobsters are simmered in a flavorful broth of bay leaves, lemon, lime, fennel, star anise, and coriander. The potatoes, meanwhile, get a quick 10-minute boil – until they’re nice and tender, upon which they’re sliced crosswise into chunky discs. Season the potatoes and lobsters (sliced into thick medallions) with salt and pepper, a drizzle of olive oil, and a final crisping in a hot pan — and that’s just about all you need for the basic version of this recipe!
Arrange the crispy potato discs on the plate with your choice of tossed salad greens, then place the lobster meat on top of this starchy platform. Add a dollop of mayonnaise, and, as the pièce de résistance, a spoonful of caviar for a second-to-none potato salad.
The secret is in the homemade truffle mayonnaise
You’d think that with the lobster medallions and the caviar, the luxury factor of your dish is already turned up to 11. That’s not all — if you want to take it even further, the secret is in neither of these ingredients: it’s actually in the humble mayo that’s drizzled on top. Not just any kind of mayo, mind you, but truffle mayonnaise (you can swap it for truffle aioli, too).
Start by whisking two egg yolks together with a pinch of mustard powder (to stabilize the mayo as well as giving it a slight tang) and a splash of white wine vinegar to brighten up the sauce. Everything’s stirred together with rich olive oil, added slowly while whisking, until it thickens into mayo. Then the final touch: truffle oil. Its earthy richness and unmistakable luxury aroma (despite not containing any real truffle) transform the mayo into something you simply can’t replicate with anything store-bought.
Sure, in a pinch, regular mayo is fine, but you’ve spent good money on the lobsters and caviar so far. A touch of extra effort and a few minutes to make truffle mayo is, in our opinion, worth it to achieve the ultimate Gordon Ramsay-approved lobster and crispy potato masterpiece!
