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Two generations ago, lobster was a poor man’s meal; today, lobster by-products have become the finest of foods.

Baked. Boiled. Steamed. Creamed. If you’re an Atlantic Canadian, or if you have even a bit of salt water in your veins, you might associate those words with lobster. But what do you associate with the words oil, butter and caviar? The folks at Village Bay Seafood Products, in Richibucto, NB, are working hard to expand our lobster vocabulary.

Village Bay is a family-run operation that started in 1969, with the aim to modernize the way oysters were cultivated and harvested. Oysters still play a huge role in the business—today more than eight million oysters are cultivated at its facility each year.

Company founder Armand King expanded the business to include processing the relatively obscure rock crab, a small variety that lives, as its name suggests, among rocks. Because it produces only a small amount of meat per unit, rock crabs were primarily used as bait by fishermen. But I can tell you that rock crab is some of the tastiest crab you’ll find; it’s delightfully sweet and makes a perfect crab cake.

In 2005, Danny King, Armand’s son, took over the helm of Village Bay, bringing with him more ideas—and lobster seemed like a logical choice for the next stage of innovation.

He hired French chef Pierre Bouriaud and they created a development kitchen, focusing on producing value-added products. Chef Pierre thinks we typically don’t use lobster to its full advantage: we either discard much of it—the bodies and shells, for example—or worse, we ship our lobster to other countries that do use the by-products. They then sell the resulting product back to us at an inflated price.

One of Village Bay’s splendid products is lobster oil. It has a permanent place in my pantry: it’s made with 100 per cent pure Canadian canola oil and lobster, the flavour coming from lobster shells and bodies; it’s trans fat free and a good source of omega-3 fatty acids. I use it as part of my marinades and also as a drizzle on prepared foods.

The lobster spread, in turn, can be used alone as a dip or a spread but it is also beautiful stirred into a cream sauce for pasta, or stirred into soups and chowders for added lobster flavour. Cognac is one of the ingredients along with lobster paste, butter and spices. With a combination like that, it has to be good!

The pièce de résistance at Village Bay has to be the lobster caviar; it’s the product that Chef Pierre is most passionate about. But the product didn’t come together overnight.

“The caviar was first a wrong!” he says, in heavily accented English. “During the day we work maybe 20 times with the same green lobster eggs, trying to obtain the grain, texture, the taste. One evening, tired and discouraged, we thought we made a mistake and—it was what we were looking for! Immediately we try again, and again the miracle!

“The first lobster caviar in the world was made here, inside this kitchen, in front of our eyes. Since then, with the recipe well protected, this little New Brunswick discovery is in the finest stores in the US, in Europe, all over the world!”

Yet the folks at Village Bay are not content with the successes they’ve had—they know they must continue to be innovative in the marketplace, and they have close to 100 products in development.

While export is a huge aspect of the company’s business, Atlantic Canadians have the pleasure of experiencing Village Bay products at home as well. Products are available at its store on site, but if you’re are not able to visit in person you can call or e-mail, and have product shipped to you.

I hope you’ll give them a try, perhaps in one of Chef Pierre’s recipes, following, or in your own creative way.

Recipes featured in this article

 

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