Langouste à la Parisienne (Cold Spiny Lobster, Parisian Style)

Ingredients

• 1 spiny lobster
• Ordinary court-bouillon
• Slices of truffle
• Jelly
• Vegetable salad
• Sauce Mayonnaise
• Medium artichoke bottoms
• Lettuce leaves
• Hard-boiled eggs

Instructions

1. Fix the spiny lobster solidly on a small board with the tail well stretched out.
2. Cook it in ordinary court-bouillon and let it cool.
3. To take out the tail, either detach the membrane underneath level with the edges of the shell, or make two parallel incisions in the shell 4 centimetres apart running from head to tail.
4. Remove the tail as whole as possible and divide it into regular escalopes.
5. Decorate each escalope with a plain or fluted slice of truffle and sprinkle them with melted, cold jelly until well covered.
6. Take the flesh and the creamy parts from the body.
7. Dice the flesh and add it to a vegetable salad.
8. Pass the creamy parts through a sieve and join them to a lightly set sauce Mayonnaise.
9. Bind the vegetable salad with this Mayonnaise and arrange it in pyramids in medium artichoke bottoms; set a point of truffle on each and glaze with jelly.
10. Fill the shell with lettuce leaves cut in coarse julienne and fix it on a wedge-shaped pad on the serving dish so that it stands half upright.
11. Range the glazed escalopes on the spiny lobster, starting at the tail and working up by size, overlapping them slightly.
12. Surround the pad with the artichoke bottoms, alternating them with quarters of hard-boiled egg, or with halves of hard-boiled egg trimmed at the base and set upright with the yolk outwards, or with eggs in barrel shapes filled with the same salad.
13. Border the dish with croûtons of thoroughly clear white jelly.