Techniques: How to handle lobsters

Lina: I couldn't buy lobsters, I wouldn't know how to, so I probably wouldn't make this dish, because it's complicated.

Ching: If you are worried, just get your fishmonger to do it. In the supermarket as well... you can get fresh cooked lobster.

Lina: Ok, ok. So it's already cooked, you don't have to worry about it.

Ching: Yes. But I cooked these earlier today. I got them live from the fishmonger. I put them in the freezer, I let them sleep for a little bit and then I had to put them in some boiling water.

Ok now, the tail should come off quite easily. It should break off. So you just pull that off. Now the claws, they just come off as well, so just pull that off. The head. I'm going to just pull the legs out. This is what you don't want, this is like the 'dead man's fingers', you can't eat these, so its really important to remove those. And just put that in there. I don't want to lose the meat that's in the middle because that's really juicy and that's the best bit.

Now that I'm going to keep for decoration. We want to crack the claw, so that's going to allow all the delicious juices to soak into the meat. And these are all the pieces that are going into the dish.

This bit here, again we want to cut it into pieces. The easiest way to do that is to lay that flat on there, and then just make two slits into the shell and then that's still together, so you just... [Ching slices through the shell.]

Lina: You've got it nice.

Ching: And you can just slice through the meat and through to the other side. I think we've got enough, I think I'm going to save that for tomorrow's lunch.

Lina: Done.