Unstoppable Foodie Cookbook Club – July 2021
Lobster, 75 Recipes Celebrating the World’s Favorite Seafood
About
Our featured cookbook for July 2021 is Lobster, 75 Recipes Celebrating the World’s Favorite Seafood by Dana Moos. This cookbook speaks to our love of Maine and passion for all things lobster, especially fresh Maine lobster roll. We spend a minimum of 3-4 weeks a year in Maine, so the recipes in this book were so welcoming. In reality, anybody that loves lobster, cookbooks and or beautiful recipes needs to pick up a copy of this book for your kitchen!
Dana’s recipes have breakfast, lunch and dinner covered. The recipes are divided into the following categories: Starters and Small Bites, Dips and Spreads, Soups and Salads, Sandwiches and Handhelds, Tacos, Main Courses, Breakfast and Bloody Mary drinks.
This book is designed to take your lobster dishes to the next level. Every recipe is elevated in some way with the use of a special ingredient, sauce or fusion of cooking styles. Award-winning chef Dana Moos helps your prepare a memorable and gourmet lobster dish in your home. I picked up this copy for Valarie on our recent Maine trip from our favorite book store in all of Maine – Sherman’s of Bar Harbor. There were many great books on Maine and cooking, but this one covers both!
Book Summary
This book takes everyone’s favorite seafood, lobster, and uses creative ways to make this sweet and succulent meat from this crustacean shine in every recipe. We love the sauces Dana creates and uses across multiple recipes. As a resident of Maine and lover of lobster, Dana adds all her years of culinary experience as a chef and innkeeper to all these beautiful dishes. There is no doubt the lobster is the star and rightfully so of this book. There is nothing like fresh Maine lobster from the cold waters of the Atlantic.
This book is really all about flavor using the star ingredient – lobster. Her preferred flavor profile tends to be Asian fusion. Before she takes you on a culinary journey of flavor and possibilities, she gets you up to speed in the Basics section to give you a better understanding of lobster basics: yield from each lobster, steaming versus boiling, grilling lobster, poaching and most importantly picking fresh lobster meat.
There are so many great recipes in this book. Trying to pick one is like choosing a favorite child. May we suggest starting with pages nine and ten where she shares her favorite recipes in the book. Her picks feature beautiful sauces, aioli’s, glazes, and flavored butters to make flavors. She states her favorite sauces in the book are Smoked Red Pepper Aioli, Smoked Truffle Aioli, Soy Glaze and Brown Butter Wasabi Mayo.
May I suggest two words to sum up this book and the recipes within…..Flavor Bomb!
Recipes
Lobster, 75 Recipes Celebrating the World’s Favorite Seafood, is packed full of amazing recipes. This is not your basic lobster cookbook! Think lobster & pork pot stickers, lobster spring roll, lobster tacos, lobster crepes and her award-winning lobster wontons. There are traditional dishes like lobster Newburg, lobster bisque and chowder, but there is more of fried lobster po’boys, lobster quiche and jambalaya. Dana’s spin on all these recipes is brilliant! Her uses of spice, seasonings and amazing ingredients create beautiful flavor profiles and unforgettable recipes.
Author’s Recommendation: Dana reached out to us and suggested we start with the Savory Scallion Waffles Topped with Brown Butter – Poached Lobster, Poached Egg, Brown Butter Wasabi Mayo, and Sweet Soy Glaze. (page 221).
Below are a five of our favorite recipes that you will want to make and enjoy:
- Lobster-topped Wontons – Fried wontons, smoked truffle aioli with charred scallions and truffle oil, and a soy glaze. This is a double award-winning recipe (page 12)
- Panko-Fried Lobster Bites with Garlic Mayo – A simple recipe with maximum flavors. All the goodness of lobster in bites size pieces. (page 39)
- Creamy Lobster, Shrimp and Parmesan Dip – Your friends will always want to be at your house when you put this dip out. Two cheeses, garlic, mayo and a little shrimp bring this lobster dish to the front. (page 77)
- Crispy Corn Lobster Tacos – Seriously, combine your love of tacos with lobster! The mango jalapeno relish with the onion aioli and fried shallots bring amazing flavor to this lobster stuffed house-fried corn tortillas. (page 147)
- Lobster Piccata with Capers, Lemon, White Wine, and Caramelized Shallots over Bucatini – This must-have dish will be your new favorite. Lobster, pasta, and your favorite flavors all in one dish! (page 177)
Photography / Styling / Publisher
The photography and food styling is all Dana Moos. She is very talented and wears many hats: real-estate broker, chef, author and former innkeeper. She is also the author of The Art of Breakfast, which is now in its 2nd Edition.
This book a just over 235 pages is the perfect cookbook for any lobster enthusiast or foodie, chasing amazing flavor combinations.
The book was published in by Down East Books in 2021. They feature books that reflect the diversity of Maine and New England.
Recommendation
If you enjoy eating lobster, this is the book for you. 
The 75 recipes in this book all have a unique spin on your traditional dishes. Dana ramps up the flavor profiles of each dish we a unique combination of ingredients, sauces and cooking techniques.
You may have a few seafood or Maine cookbooks on your shelves, but none like this book. Open it up to Page 203 and you will see her recipe for Lobster and Scallops Hamayaki Style with Soy Glaze.
This recipe screams umami bomb! Be sure to pick up a copy for you or as a gift! You will love this book!!
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Unstoppable Foodie Cookbook Club
Valarie and I love cookbooks. Anywhere where you sit in our house, a book is no more than an arm’s length away. Multiple copies of digital cookbooks have been downloaded to our devices, but there is nothing like holding a physical cookbook in your hands. A book filled with amazing stories and recipes. It is no surprise, whenever you open a cookbook from our shelves, you will see notes in the columns, tabbed pages, and printed out recipes or ingredient lists stuffed between the covers. Cookbooks are meant to be used just like any other tool in the kitchen.
We love the practicality and usefulness of cookbooks, but we are always hooked by the stories behind the recipes in a cookbook. In that spirit, we combined our intellectual curiosity with our passion for great food. “Exploring the World, One Dish at a Time” will always be our passion and the mission behind Unstoppable Foodie and Unstoppable Foodie Cookbook Club!
We would love to eventually roll the book club into an in-person cooking event, but for now we will keep it a virtual activity of sharing recipes from our favorite cookbooks on social media. We are looking to eventually offer an online class where we can cook together real time through a live stream platform.
The goal of the book club is simply to inspire you to cook more by elevating your home cooking skills. It is meant to be fun. Regardless of your current skill level, we look forward to you joining us. We are sure through this experience you will undoubtably increase your skills in the kitchen.
Please share your photos or your dishes with us so we can feature them on our socials and on our blog. Be sure to use the #unstoppablefoodie or #unstoppablefoodiecookbookclub. The Unstoppable Foodie Cookbook Club is meant to be a social activity and a two-way street for all of us to get better at cooking and spending more time in the kitchen. We hope you join us on this culinary adventure!
In addition to our monthly blog post featuring our favorite cookbooks, we will give away a new copy of the featured cookbook on Instagram.
Here is a list of the cookbooks we have given away to date:
- October 2020: Piatti (affiliate link), Plates and Platters for Sharing, Inspired by Italy, by Stacy Adimando
- November 2020: The Lost Kitchen, Recipes and a Good Life Found in Freedom, Maine by Erin French
- December 2020: Cork and Knife, Build Complex Flavors with Bourbon, Wine, Beer and More by Emily and Matt Clifton
- January 2020: Full Moon Suppers at Salt Water Farm, Recipes from Land and Sea by Annemarie Ahearn
- February 2020: Half Baked Harvest (HBH) Cookbook, Recipes from my Barn in the Mountains by Tieghan Gerard
- March 2021: Old World Italian, Recipes and Secrets from our Travels in Italy by Mimi Thorrison
- April 2021: Eat Delicious, 125 Recipes for Your Daily Dose of Awesome by Dennis Prescott
- May 2021: Franklin Barbecue, A Meat Smoking Manifesto by Aaron Franklin and Jordan MacKay
- June 2021: Home Grown, Cooking from My New England Roots by Matt Jennings