Lobster with Tomato and Cognac Sauce

• How to cook lobster
• How to get the most flavor from a lobster
• An assortment of sauces for lobster and crayfish
• How to make crustacean butter
• How to make a bisque

No one knows exactly why this dish is named after America since there’s nothing American about it except that Americans like lobster. After all, we boil our lobsters in a big pot instead of cutting them up and simmering them like a stew with Cognac. The more chauvinistic of French cooks insist that this is all a terrible misunderstanding and the original name was meant to be homard à l’armoricaine, named after the Armorique, a region that includes part of Brittany, which is of course famous for its lobster. But there’s a problem: There aren’t (or weren’t) any tomatoes in Brittany.