New Feature: Cooking with Kilgore! Mardi Gras Feast Part One: The Fellowship of the Crawfish
The beginning of a five-day foodie journey in celebration of Mardi Gras and Nawlins
Ok. Let me explain. No. There is too much. Let me sum up.
I love to cook. I decided to do a four-day (stretched to five) meal theme for Mardi Gras! So for the first part of this feast, I broke out some crawfish jambalaya that I had in the chest freezer, and some crawfish stock from the same location, to be used as the base for a bisque.
Now, most of this four-part series of recipes and cooking is based on recipes I’ve found online. However, with the exception of the jambalaya, I’ve modified most of them enough to call them original. I will give you *my* versions of these recipes over the course of this series.
Crawfish Jambalaya:
The original recipe can be found HERE
Ingredients:
4 smoked Andouille sausage links, sliced thinly
1 ½ Cups chopped onion (I used a yellow)
½ Cup diced celery
½ Cup diced green bell pepper
3 large cloves of garlic, minced
2 Tbsp butter, divided
2 Tbsp vegetable oil, divided1 1/2 Cups long grain rice
1 can stewed tomatoes
2 Cups chicken broth
2 Bay leaves
½ teaspoon ground thyme
½ teaspoon hot sauce (I used Tapatío), plus additional for serving
1 ½ Tbsp tomato paste
1 pound crawfish tail meat (more on that in a bit)
½ Cup chopped green onions (for garnish)
Instructions:
Heat a Dutch oven over medium heat and add 1 Tbsp each of butter and vegetable oil. Add the sausage and sauté for 2-3 minutes until lightly browned. Remove from the Dutch oven and set aside.
Add remaining butter and oil, add onion, celery, and green peppers. Sauté 3-4 minutes until soft. Add garlic and cook for an additional minute. Add everything else except for the crawfish, the sausage, and the green onions, and stir well.
Bring your concoction to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and cover. Cook for 15 minutes, until the rice is cooked and the liquid is absorbed.
Add in the crawfish and sausage, cook for an additional 2-3 minutes to warm the meats. Serve garnished with green onion and additional hot sauce to taste.
Couple quick notes on this. When I made this last time, I did actually do the crawfish boil, with the express intent of freezing the broth/stock for the next recipe. You will need about six to seven pounds of crawfish to do so. The next recipe also calls for crawfish meat, but we bought a couple pounds from the freezer section.
On to the next one…
Crawfish Bisque:
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp butter
1 large onion
6 oz can of tomato paste
4 cloves of garlic
8-10 Cups crawfish or seafood stock (HERE’s a recipe if you need one)
½ Cup uncooked white rice
2 lb crawfish meat, divided
2 Tbsp half & half
Cajun seasoning to taste
Parsley, for garnish
Instructions:
First, I put the onion and the garlic in the food processor. I wanted them to essentially disintegrate into the bisque.
Heat the butter in a large soup pot over medium heat. Sauté the onions and garlic for three minutes, then add the tomato paste. Cook for another two minutes.
Slowly stir in 6 Cups of crawfish stock into the mixture, and stir well.
Add rice and crawfish, reduce to medium-low, and cook for 35 minutes until the rice is tender.
Using an emulsion blender, make your bisque smooth, then add the remainder of the crawfish stock.
Cook for another 5 minutes, then add the lemon juice and half & half, season to taste.
Garnish with parsley, and enjoy!
Stay tuned for more, kids!
Good afternoon from Western Wishes.
Kilgore