Pasta with lobster, butter beans and chives

The last clambake that my family went to, a few years back, our then almost two-year-old ate the lion’s share of my lobster. I’m a loving, giving, generous mom, so I only resented him a little bit for it, and I was secretly tickled that my crazy kid adored the bizarre shellfish.

Fast forward three years: I ordered a whole lobster for the kid, because I simply didn’t want to share. Well, Owen simply didn’t want to eat more than five or six bites of his lobster (the slip and slide is way more fun), so we ended up with almost a whole lobster left over. Next year, it’s hot dogs for the kid, but my more immediate problem was not solved quite as easily.

I wanted to be more creative than just throwing the lobster over a salad, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to mix it with mayonnaise and stick it on a roll. The fleeting thought of making my own raviolis thankfully passed (although I’m really doing it someday), but I couldn’t get the idea of lobster with pasta out of my head. And so my dish was born….

Pasta with Lobster, Butter Beans and Chives
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Ingredients:

8 ounces pasta, cooked according to directions (I used brown rice rotini)
4 leeks, sliced
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
1 cup lobster (or whatever you’ve got left over)
15-ounce can butter beans
3/4 cup chopped chives
3/4 cup chopped basil
2 tablespoons capers, drained
lots of freshly ground black pepper
baby spinach

For the dressing:

3 tablespoons orange muscat champagne vinegar (Trader Joe’s, baby)
1/4 cup grapefruit juice
1/3 cup olive oil

In a large skillet, cook the leeks, red pepper, and cumin seed over medium high heat until fragrant and tender, about 10 minutes. Add the lobster and beans to the pan and heat through. Remove from heat, add the chives, basil and capers, and season generously with freshly ground black pepper. Add the cooked pasta.

Whisk dressing ingredients together and toss all ingredients in the sauce. Serve on a bed of baby spinach.