Crab and Crawfish Etouffee

"We have a common language with food."

-- Chef Leah Chase

Chef Leah Chase was a culinary icon in New Orleans, known as the "Queen of Creole Cuisine." Her restaurant, Dooky Chase, was a center of Creole cuisine and culture, earning her many awards and honors. But, Chef Chase's contributions go far beyond food. 

The restaurant, Dooky Chase, had an important role in the civil rights movement. It was one of the very few places in New Orleans where African Americans could meet and discuss the struggles of the time. Local civil rights leaders would meet in the upstairs meeting rooms of the restaurant, while Chef Chase would serve gumbo and fried chicken. Some of those meetings involved Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Freedom Riders. As they began to organize the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, King and others would meet with local civil rights leaders at Dooky Chase to learn about the similar boycott in Baton Rouge.

The struggle for equal rights is an important part of our history as a country. That history is under attack. Such an attack is not simply an attack upon African Americans, but it is an attack upon all of us. It is an effort to deny a painful part of our past, out of a mistaken notion that our admitting to our shortcomings somehow makes us weak. To the contrary, acknowledging our shortcomings actually makes us stronger, because it is the first step toward fixing our past mistakes and building a better future. 

All of this requires us to know our true history, which inevitably and unquestionably demands that we acknowledge the contribution of everyone to our combined existence. This acknowledgment in particularly embodied in Creole cuisine. When one thinks of Creole food, perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is its relationship to French cuisine, most likely because of the Acadians who migrated from Canada to the Mississippi delta. But, the true history of Creole cuisine is so much more. It is a true melting pot, incorporating African American and Native American ingredients, processes and traditions. Creole food is truly a common language that unites multiple groups of peoples, each unique in their own history, but each of whom share a common bond. 

I wanted to acknowledge that common bond when I prepared this recipe of Crab and Crawfish Etouffee. I used my No Man's Land seasoning. The mix uses a Creole seasoning base but adds sundried tomato powder and crawfish powder, both of which are ingredients drawn from the culinary history of enslaved Africans. The combination of those powders added an earthiness and almost an umami to the dish, whcih easily made up for the lack of pork or sausage. In the end, this dish was perhaps one of the best dishes that I have prepared in recent months. 

CRAB AND CRAWFISH ETOUFFEE

Recipe adapted from Food & Wine

Serves 6-8

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds crawfish. tails and meat removed
• 4 1/2 cups of water
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup all purpose flower
• 1 medium sized yellow onion, finely chopped
• 2 large celery stalks, finely chopped
• 2 large green bell peppers finely chopped
• 10 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
• 1 tablespoon Creole seasoning (or No Man's Land Seasoning)
• 1 dried bay leaf
• 4 thyme sprigs
• 1 pound fresh crabmeat, picked over
• Kosher salt
• Long grain rice, for serving

Directions:

1. Prepare the crawfish. Rinse well. Remove the tails and remove the meat from the tails, reserving the shells from the tails. Bring 4 1/2 cups water and reserved shells to a simmer in a large saucepan over medium heat. Remove from heat; let stand for 15 minutes. Strain stock and discard shells. Set aside 4 cups crawfish stock.

2. Prepare the base. Melt butter in a large heavy saucepan over medium heat. Whisk in flour. Cook, whisking constantly until light blond in color, about 3 minutes. Add onion, celery, bell pepper and garlic. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender, about 8 minutes. Add the creole seasoning, bay leaf and thyme and cook, stirring constantly 1 minute. Add stock, cook, stirring occasionally until slightly thickened, about 30 minutes. 

3. Add crawfish and crab meat. Add the crawfish and crab meat. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, about 3 minutes. Discard the bay leaf and thyme sprigs. Season with Kosher salt to taste. Serve over rice.

PEACE.

Salsa de Congrejo

I love to eat crawfish; and, in my cooking, I have made a few etoufees and gumbos that feature the freshwater crustaceans.  A while back, I bought a bag of frozen crawfish, hoping to make a nice meal with it. (I don't have a good reliable source for fresh crawfish.) When I got around to deciding to make that meal, I found myself wanting something more than a bowl of gumbo. I wanted to try something different.

It got me thinking to another dish that I love to eat ... chapulines. There is something about grasshoppers marinated in a variety of spices, chiles and herbs that is very appetizing. The best chapulines recipes come, of course, from the Mexican State of Oaxaca. So, I decided that I would pursue the pages of Oaxacan recipes looking for a recipe that could serve as a starting point a crawfish dish. 

To be sure, there were a few recipes that caught my attention. The one that I decided to make was a Salsa de Chapulines. Perhaps it has been my recent craze in making Sambols - like Lunu Miris or Dried Shrimp Sambol - that got me thinking this salsa could have a variety of uses in other dishes. All I needed to do was to substitute the grasshoppers with crawfish. I would then have Salsa de Congrejo. 

This salsa is very easy to make as long as you have access to some good tomatillos, which you can find at most Latin American markets and even in some big name grocery stores. I did not have any morita chiles on hand, so I bought a can of chipotles and just made sure that I rinsed the adobo off of them. One could use dried or reconstituted chipotles if you have them, but the store-bought ones were more convenient to use. 

Now, I just need a good source for chapulines (spoiler -- I found one, check back for that post).

SALSA DE CONGREJO

Recipe adapted from Oaxaca, by Bricia Lopez and Javier Cabral

Serves a few

Ingredients:

• Generous one pound of tomatillos, husked and rinsed
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup chopped white onion 
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled
• 4 morita chiles (substitute chipotle chiles), stems removed
• 1/4 cup cooked and rinsed crawfish tails
• 1 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

Directions:

1. Boil the tomatillos. In a 2-quart saucepan over medium high heat, combine the tomatillos and 1/2 cup water and heat to boiling. Reduce the heat to medium, cover and boil for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. until the tomatillos have changed color from a dark to a light green color. Set aside. 

2. Prepare the salsa. Heat the oil in a large pan over high heat. Add the onion and garlic, reduce the heat and mix well. Sauté until the garlic and onion are golden brown, then remove from the pan and reserve. Add the chiles to the pan and toast them for about 1 minute or until the color changes to a bright red. Remove from the pan and reserve. Add the crawfish tails and fry for about 3-4 minutes, until they are heated through. 

3. Finish the dish. In a blender, pure the tomatillos, chiles and garlic and onion mixture, 3/4 cup water and the salt. Stir in the lime juice. Pour into a bowl and add the crawfish tails. 

PEACE.

Broiled Tilapia with Crawfish

As I was preparing for making a Mardi Gras meal of Seafood Gumbo, I bought a package of frozen Crawfish, which is already precooked.  The package was too large for the Seafood Gumbo, so I divided the package into two and decided to use one part to make a small and quick dish for Clare.  We had tilapia in the freezer and I decided to use that fish and make a sauce that could be put over the fish.

In trying to think through the sauce, I had a brown butter sauce in mind.  I've made a brown butter sauce for pasta, but this time, it would be only for the fish.  I also wanted to layer a few different flavors into the sauce, to make it a little more complex.  I bought some sweet peppers, roasted them and diced them.  This would add sweetness to the butter sauce.   I decided to add a teaspoon of crushed red pepper, which would provide the spice and a teaspoon of smoked paprika, which would provide a smokiness to the butter sauce.   For a sauce that I thought up in about five minutes, it did not turn out too bad.  However, I think that, if I make the sauce again, I would probably reduce the amount of butter used by about a quarter or a third.

BROILED TILAPIA WITH CRAWFISH

A Chef Bolek Original
Serves 2

Ingredients (for the tilapia):

2 pieces of tilapia

Extra virgin olive oil

Salt, to taste

Pepper, to taste

Ingredients (for the Sauce):

1/2 cup of crawfish tails

2 roasted peppers, diced

1/2 red onion

1 clove garlic, diced

5-6 tablespoons of butter

1 tablespoon of rosemary, diced

1 tablespoon of sage, diced

1 tablespoon of thyme, diced

1 teaspoon of crushed red pepper

1 teaspoon of smoked paprika

Directions:

1.  Prepare the fish.  Heat the broiler.  Brush the tilapia with olive oil and brush a broiler-safe pan with olive oil (to avoid sticking).

2.  Saute the vegetables.  Heat the butter on medium heat in a saute pan.  Add the garlic and onions and saute for about five minutes.  Add the crushed red pepper and continue to saute for the rest of the five minutes.  Add the roasted peppers and fresh herbs (rosemary, sage, thyme).  Stir the vegetables and continue the sauteing for another couple of minutes.  Add the smoked paprika and stir very well.

3.  Broil the tilapia.  Cook the tilapia under the broiler until it is done, which should take about seven minutes.  Remove from the heat.

4.  Add the crawfish to the vegetables.  While the tilapia is cooking, add the crawfish and stir.  Reduce the heat to low and continue to cook until the crawfish is warmed through.

5. Finish the dish. Plate the fish, spoon some of the crawfish and vegetable mixture over the fish.  Serve immediately.

ENJOY!

Seafood Gumbo, John Besh Style

I wanted to make a nice meal for my beautiful wife, Clare, inspired by Mardi Gras.  While I have eaten many a dish of etoufee and gumbo in my time, I have never made these dishes, or, for that matter, any Creole or Cajun dish.  I thought this had to change, beginning with my first attempt to make gumbo. 

I combed through a lot of recipes on my free time, trying to find  one that would be fairly easy for a novice like myself, but remain true to the culture that underlies the dish.  After a while, I came across a blogger who posted a recipe for seafood gumbo by John Besh.  A native of New Orleans, Besh has dedicated himself to the cuisine of Southern Louisiana.

However, I did not find just any John Besh, seafood gumbo recipe.  I had found the "Gumbo for the Gulf" recipe.  The "Gumbo for the Gulf" was a campaign that called upon cooks to host parties and cook gumbo for their guests, all the while raising money to help families in the Gulf region who were devastated by the spill.  John Besh donated this recipe to that campaign.  So, I had stumbled upon a recipe that had been used for a very good cause, something that is generally, and in this particular case, personally important to me.

With the recipe in hand, I had to turn my attention to the ingredients.  Besh's recipe calls for use blue crabs and andouille sausage.  I could not get the first ingredient in a cost efficient manner for just the two of us (live blue crabs are very expensive) and I could not use the second ingredient because Clare does not eat meat.  (Fortunately, she eats fish and seafood.)  Also, despite checking two different stores, I could not find any okra.  Consequently, I had to make a few tweaks to the ingredients called for in recipe.

I also made one other modification to John Besh's recipe.  The original recipe serves ten people, and I was only cooking for two.  To make matters a little more difficult, some ingredients, like lump crab meat, are sold in 8 ounce containers.  The original recipe called for 1 pound of crab meat (16 ounces).  I could not just buy 1/5 of a pound of lump crab meat.  So, in the end, I decided to cut the recipe in half, hoping that, if I was to prepare the dish properly, we could have some delicious leftovers for lunch. 

In preparing the dish, I confronted the notable characteristic of my style of cooking ... the emphasis on the protein.  As you can see from the pictures, I heaped a lot of catfish, crab meat, crawfish, oysters and shrimp into the bowl.  While a mass of this seafood is usually not considered a negative, it overshadowed the broth, which was the culmination of the first successful attempt on my part to get a roux to reach the appropriate shade of dark brown that is mandated by gumbo lovers throughout the Gulf region. 

So, with all of the changes I noted above, I can't say that this is John Besh's gumbo recipe (nor do I think he would want me to say that given my gumbo falls far short of the gumbo that he would make).  So, I will refer to this dish in the style of the original Iron Chef program.  Whenever an Iron Chef would make a dish inspired by a style of cooking or a place, they would refer to the dish in a particular way, noting it prepared in a certain style.  Along those lines, I present to you, Seafood Gumbo, John Besh style.

SEAFOOD GUMBO, JOHN BESH STYLE

Adapted from a recipe by John Besh from My New Orleans: A Cookbook

     by John Besh, Andrews/McMeel Publishing and reprinted on the

     Gulf State Organizer's blog
Serves 4-5

Ingredients:

1/2 cup canola oil

1/2 cup flour

1 large onion diced

1 stalk celery, diced

1/2 green pepper, diced

1/2 cup sliced okra

1 clove garlic, minced

1 sprig of thyme, leaves only

1 1/2 quarts of seafood stock

1 bay leaf

1/2 pound of shrimp (preferably American)

1/2 cup of lump crab meat

8 ounces of shucked oysters

1/2 cup of crawfish meat

1 pound of catfish, cut into bite size pieces

1/2 cup of minced green onions

Salt, to taste

Ground black pepper, to taste

Basic Creole spices (see recipe below)

Worcestershire sauce

Tabasco

1 cup cooked rice

Directions:

 1.  Make the roux.  Heat the canola oil in a large cast iron or heavy bottomed pot over high heat.  Whisk the flour into the hot oil.  It will immediately begin to sizzle.  Reduce the heat to moderate and continue whisking until the roux takes on a deep brown color, about ten minutes.

Making the roux.

2.  Saute the onions.  Add the onions and continue to stir with a wooden spoon, incorporating the onions into the roux.  Reduce the heat and continue to stir for another five to seven minutes, until the roux is a rich dark brown.

Trying to get that rich, dark brown color.

3.  Saute the other vegetables.  Add the celery, bell peppers, garlic and okra.  Increase the heat to moderate and continue to cook and stir for a couple of minutes.

Celery, bell peppers and garlic.  I wish I had okra.

4.  Create the soup.  Add the thyme, seafood stock and bay leaf.  Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally and cook for about twenty five minutes at a simmer.

With seafood stock.  Even better with homemade stock.

5.  Add the spices and protein.  Add the Creole spices and taste to make sure that you have just the right amount.  Then, add the catfish first.  Stir gently.  After about three minutes, add the oysters.  Continue to stir gently.  After about one to two minutes, add the shrimp.  Continue to stir and then add the crab and crawfish.  Add the Worcestershire and Tabasco.  Allow the seafood to cook for about two to three minutes more and then take off the heat. 

My favorite seafood ... Crab, Oysters, Shrimp, Crawfish and Catfish

6.  Plate the dish.  Spoon some rice into bowls.  Serve the gumbo over the rice.

And, last but not least, the recipe for basic Creole spices.  One note, I upped the cayenne pepper because I like things spicy.  For those who do not like the heat, just add 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper:

BASIC CREOLE SPICE

Adapted from a recipe by John Besh from My New Orleans: A Cookbook

     by John Besh, Andrews/McMeel Publishing and reprinted on the

     Gulf State Organizer's blog 

Makes 1/4 cup

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon of celery salt
1/2 tablespoon of sweet paprika
1/2 tablespoon of coarse sea salt
1/2 tablespoon of freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tablespoon of garlic powder
1/2 tablespoon of onion powder
1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice.

Directions:
Mix all of the ingredients together.

As I noted above, I ended up plating a lot of catfish, oysters, crawfish and shrimp, which obscured the very good broth that lies underneath. In doing so, I learned something from this endeavor ... Clare and I need to invite people over for gumbo, so I can divide the protein and rice between more bowls for hungry guests and, in the process, show off the broth. If the recipe turns out as well as it did when I made it this time, I think there will be no shortage of people willing to eat it!

I hope everyone has a happy and safe Mardi Gras and Fat Tuesday.  And, of course,

ENJOY!