The Crawfish Boil: The Main Event

Once Spring comes around and Saints football and Mardi Gras have ended, the good people of Louisiana have to find something new to fill their weekends, and that something is typically attempting to eat your own weight (or usually at least 5 lbs per person) in delicious crawfish during the day-long gloriousness of a crawfish boil. It's not just about the star of the show, though, as all the wonderful veggies invited along to soak up all that marvelous spice can be just as big of an attraction for some folks as the mudbugs themselves. Hell, these feasts are so important to the culture that it's practically a rite of passage when kids back home finally perfect their peeling technique. So long as everyone is having a good time and the beer is flowing as freely as good conversations, there just might not be a wrong way to do a boil.

With the crack team I had assembled featuring crab boil master Jaime, kitchen rockstar Kevin, crawfish wrangler Dennis, official beer getter and Dennis whisperer Jackie, fellow Louisiana native (and closet crawfish hater) Brandon, guacamole master Laura, and the ready to let the babysitter handle things for the night power couple of Sacha and Maconda, our crawfish boil was sure to be one for the ages.

Crawfish Boil
Time: About 2 beers
Servings:  ~ 6-10 people

Salt

Still healthy at this point

Pepper
Cayenne
Zatarain's Crawfish, Shrimp, and Crab Boil (about 1.5 16 oz. bags per round)
30+ lbs crawfish, live and rinsed well
Garlic, whole
Onions, halved
Brussels Sprouts
Green bell peppers, halved
Mounds of mushrooms
Celery, chopped in half
Red potatoes
Corn on the cob
Lemons, halved

All the inner boiled goodness will absorb a lot of the water, so make sure you have enough.

1. Probably ask someone who has done this a few more times how to do it and skip the rest of the steps.
2. Successfully purchase a massive bag of crawfish and manage to keep them alive until ready to boil (ice chest).
3. Don't worry at all about being precise and crack open a beer.
4. Season water with salt, pepper, cayenne, and Zatarain's in a large stockpot over a propane flame. The water should cover reach about halfway up the pot. It needs room for all the goodies that will be dropped in but also needs be enough for when the crawfish are added and absorb a good amount of the water. Bring to a boil.
5. Add the potatoes, garlic, onion, Brussels Sprouts, mushrooms, lemon, celery, and potatoes. by eyeballing how much you want. Return to a boil and cook for 10 minutes. 
6. Pour in the crawfish, return to boil then turn off the flame and let sit for 15 minutes. 
7. Remove the crawfish and start the next batch. Re-season and add additional water as needed. Subsequent batches will be spicier.
8. Attempt to eat your weight in crawfish.

A very small portion of all the peeled deliciousness.

Again, the most important part of the crawfish boil is to have fun, and we sure did. Catching up while waiting for the suckers to boil was just as great as eating the finished product. These crawfish were absolutely bursting with the wonderful New Orleans heat and flavors (making sucking the heads and claws a must) that I've found to be lacking when I've bought crawfish elsewhere. Those flavors came through just as lip-scorching amazingly in the veggies, with the last minute Brussels sprouts being the surprise winner. Combined with the creamy nirvana of our Jambalaya and some choice sides, it was a night that our mouths and waist lines would not soon forget.

Dennis modeling with his new best friend while Jackie practices the drink running abilities she would later perfect at my wedding.

Cinco de Mayo: Crawfish Tacos

Cinco de Mayo presented quite the challenge this year. How was I supposed to have a cooking adventure worthy of past efforts like Margarita Cupcakes and Tacos Bistek on a work night (while cooking partner Kevin was busy studying for finals!)? If I wasn't going to undermine Mexican culture with heavy drinking, offensive fake mustaches and sombreros, I could at least bastardize the holiday with some fusion food. Since my Lenten season was woefully devoid of mudbugs (hmm, I should just pretend that's what I gave up!), I knew exactly what I had to do.

Crawfish Tacos
Servings: 8-12
Time: 60 minutes

1 1/2 lbs peeled crawfish tails (I used frozen)
Flour Tortillas

Necessary crunchitude

Cabbage Slaw

Previously Seen Here

3/4 of a purple cabbage, thinly sliced

3 tbsp lime juice

2 tbsp olive oil

Red pepper flakes to taste

Salt to taste

Remoulade

Adapted from All Recipes

1 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup Sriracha

3 tbsp hot and spicy or Creole Mustard

1-2 tsp prepared horseradish

1 tbsp Tabasco

2 tbsp lime juice

Perfectly hot

4 green onions, diced

1 tbsp parsley, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

Tony Chachere's to taste

Salt to taste

Piquant

Previously Seen Here
3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1/2 cup bell pepper, chopped
1 stalk celery, deveined and chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tomatoes, diced
Tabasco to taste
Tony Chachere's to taste
Salt to taste
1-2 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp butter

So many good smells. Also, this makes a fantastic dip for tortilla chips.

1. Prep the cabbage slaw by tossing all the ingredients together. Cover and refrigerate
2. Make the remoulade by whisking all the ingredients together until smooth. Cover and refrigerate
3. Start the piquant by sauteing the onion, bell pepper, celery and garlic in olive oil until the onions become translucent (about 5-7 minutes). 
4. Stir in the tomatoes and season with tabasco, Tony Chachere's and lime juice. Cook until the tomatoes start to soften (about 5 minutes).
5. Add in the crawfish and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Taste and finish seasoning. 
6. Melt in the butter.
7. Build your tacos with crawfish, cabbage slaw and remoulade.

And with that, my imaginary food truck had its signature dish.

I absolutely loved these tacos. This was the kind of dish that I'm excited to work on further and make it even more my own. My basic inspiration was a fish taco infused with Cajunness. By combining the crunch of cabbage with the potent kick of horseradish powered remoulade, the basics of what you expect from a fish taco were properly amped up to Big Easy quality. Seriously, the remoulade was the epitome of what I look for in spicy food. It brought a wonderful heat that cleared the sinuses and lingered in your mouth but didn't burn.

The only real question was how to handle the crawfish. The answer, as with most things, resided with my mother. I dug deep into the old bag of tricks and cooked them in a piquant sauce like the one we used for my favorite breakfast ever, Cajun Eggs Benedict, during the great Mom's Diner cook-athon of 2012. Crawfish have a fantastic natural flavor but can be pretty bland if you don't cook them properly. I was able to impart a lot of flavor with some fairly simple veggies and seasoning (which only got better with time. Yay, leftovers!). For future trials, I think I would like to use some blackening seasoning for additional New Orleans style and perhaps replace the parsley in the remoulade with cilantro to help tip the scales slightly toward the Mexican half of the fusion, but I could not have been happier with my maiden effort.

Not pictured: half the crawfish falling out repeatedly and my hand being covered in remoulade

Stay tuned for the rest of my Cinco de Mayo celebration- the super refreshing and easy Watermelon Jicama Salad.

Mom's Diner: Cajun Eggs Benedict

For our final culinary collaboration, my mom wanted to show we are a family with a little class and not just one that ate chili cheese fries and the food that helped lead Elvis to XXL jumpsuits and an early grave. Nothing says fancy like brunch, so we decided on the classic brunch staple- Eggs Benedict. However, on the way to making one of the most typical brunches out there, something magical happened. We Cajuned it up to create one of the most mouthwateringly delicious meals I have ever had.

Cajun Eggs Benedict
Servings: 4
Time: 30 minutes

Veggies in oil always smell awesome

1/2 cup cooking oil
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1/2 cup bell pepper, chopped
1 stalk celery heart, deveined and chopped
1 tbsp garlic, minced
Tabasco to taste
Tony Chachere's to taste
Cayenne pepper to taste
1 can Rotel
1 lb alligator and pork sausage, quartered (halved lengthwise then halved)
1 lb crawfish, peeled and seasoned (we used frozen)
Butter
4 English muffins, toasted
4 eggs

Is it pork? Is it alligator? Who cares? It's delightful.

New Orleans is all about decadence, so naturally we had to top things with buttered crawfish.

This felt like cheating.

1. Brown the sausage in 3 tbsp of olive oil over medium heat.
2. Start a piquant sauce. Sauté the onion, bell pepper, garlic and celery in several tbsp of olive oil until tender. 
3. Add the tabasco, Tony Chachere's, cayenne and rotel to the veggies and cook uncovered until well mixed (~10 minutes).
4. Mix in the sausage and simmer for 10 more minutes.
5. Melt butter in the pan you used to brown the sausage then cook the crawfish in it for about 5 minutes (season with tabasco and Tony Chachere's).
6. Poach your eggs (you can find a tutorial here).
7. Toast the English muffins.
8. Top half of an English muffin with the sausage then the poached egg, crawfish and excess piquant sauce.

It was important to load up on all the fatty goodness after taking a pretty pic.

We truly saved the best for last. Everything about this take on Eggs Benedict worked flawlessly. The alligator sausage was perfectly browned and added nice spice and heartiness to everything, but it especially blended perfectly with that poached egg (the world's fanciest and best tasting egg). The piquant sauce added some nice onion and peppers to the mix without overpowering that gooey egg like a thick sauce would have. Meanwhile the buttery crawfish helped up the savory quotient to practically unsafe levels. All of these aspects served as truly fitting toppings for that fantastic crispy toasted English muffin it sat on. This wasn't just my favorite dish I've ever made, it was one of my favorite meals I have ever eaten.

It was a truly amazing day (Yeah 4 major recipes in under 24 hours. That's just how my mom rolls.) of cooking with my mom, and I can't wait for my next visit to her diner for more delicious eats and quality culinary lessons.