Move over Santa, it's time for Lobster Claws...

Fancy a change from turkey at Christmas? The Isigny Sainte-Mère chef and Michelin-starred restaurateur Ivan Vautier has a dramatic recipe for lobster on an onion tart base. Working in the opposite way to the celebrated Tatin sisters, Ivan cooks his onions on top of greaseproof paper atop a plancha or Spanish worktop hotplate, before adding an inverted tart case to heat through.

When the onion tarts are ready to plate up, they can be up-ended and put on the plate the right way up, using the greaseproof paper to hold it all together while rapidly turning the plate the right way up. There is no time to hesitate during this operation.

Speed and strong greaseproof paper is of the essence here, otherwise you will have upside-down onion tart all over your plancha and possibly your worktop, too. A bit like the Tatin sisters, who had to rescue an apple tart that went to table upside down and later came to bear their name.

As well as lobster, Ivan uses crispy bacon pieces, referred to as ‘chips’ in the original French. Chips, that is, in the American sense of wafer thin slices of anything that is cooked or dried to a crisp, to borrow the English term.

Ivan is a devotee of the plancha. Although they run too hot to be used a tabletop, these small griddles can be set up and used on a worktop within earshot of the table, so that a confident (and committed) host can entertain guests with both cooking and conversation at the same time.

It is probably worth practicing plancha cooking before entertaining a full table, though. Find Ivan’s original recipe here: http://www.isigny-ste-mere.com/EN/recettes.php?numero=263