Amazing Lobster Sauce

Recently, a Henry's Farmers Market opened up in our neighborhood and we finally went in a couple of weeks ago. They had these spiny lobster tails on sale for $5/each so we got two. I wasn't quite sure what to do with them and just tucked them in the freezer. Last week, I bought TJ's lobster ravioli and thought those tails would add something special to the ravioli.

We've had the ravioli several times before with just pasta sauce from a jar. Since we were having them with real lobster, I wanted to utilize all of the lobster (i.e., the shells) so did a search on lobster sauce recipes. All my searching resulted in recipes that seemed very time-consuming and required more steps than I had skill to do, so I decided to take the essence of those recipes and create my own secret weapon short-cut: pasta sauce in a jar! My resourcefulness paid off with a very tasty end-product. Ken likes it more than the white wine sauce for fish.

• 2-4 lobster tails, depending on size & budget (we had 2 & subsidized with langostinos; shrimp works, too)
  
• 1 package TJ's lobster ravioli
• 1/2 cup rustico sauce
• 1/4 cup cream
• 1/2 cup dry sherry
• 3 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
  

1. Start by steaming the lobster. Place the tails into a shallow bowl, then the bowl into a stir-fry pan with about 1/2 cup of water underneath the bowl, cover and steam for about 8 minutes.
2. Once the tails lose their translucency, remove and plunge into ice water to stop cooking and quickly cool the lobster. Pull out the meat from the shells and set aside. Save the shells. There should be lobster water in the bowl that held the tails. Set that aside.
3. Melt about 2 tbsp of butter in the stir-fry pan and saute the shells until reduced, then add the lobster water from the steaming process and reduce again.
4. Deglaze with sherry and reduce.
5. Add the cream and once it comes to a boil, add the pasta sauce until it comes to a boil and reduce the heat to a simmer, stirring occasionally.
6. Meanwhile, in a separate pan, melt 1 tbsp of butter, add the mushrooms and saute until tender. Add about 2 tbsp of sherry and saute until the sherry evaporates and the mushrooms caramelize. Add mushrooms to the sauce.
7. Simmer this sauce for about another 15 minutes or so. The ravioli only takes about 5 minutes to boil, so wait until you're ready to eat to cook it.
8. As the ravioli's cooking, turn off the heat to the sauce, remove the lobster shells and add the lobster meat. Keep pan covered until the ravioli's done, then it's time to eat!

This sauce is amazingly full of lobster flavor, and it took about 30 minutes to make rather than the 1 hour or so, and with a lot less effort. When I first added the rustico sauce, I thought I had ruined the whole thing because the sauce was so strong, but the flavors mellowed out after some simmering. It was so good I wanted to lick the bowl! Let me know what you think if you get a chance to try this. And if you have an easy way to make lobster bisque, I'd like to hear about that as well.