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A Crawfish Creation

I have been feeling slightly disenchanted with my meals lately and really wanted to put some soul in my cooking. This happens when I haven’t tried anything new or eaten anything southern-spicy. So I did what I always do when my personal recipes aren’t doing it for me—I called my cooking hero, my mom. I had an idea of what I wanted to eat: I wanted a fish I could throw on my grill and top it with some kind of yumminess. I love working with another foodie on recipes—and Mom is the best of the bunch. We’ll talk about a vague idea, and the back and forth conversation about ingredients will evolve into an original dish. Mom helped me by sending me a simple white sauce recipe (easily altered) that would work with the pound of Louisiana crawfish tails I had in my freezer. (I loved the result and am already planning on trying the recipe with morels, an Idaho delicacy that, much to my chagrin, I have yet to taste. I know you can buy them but I feel I need the local experience of finding them in the wild.) So I bought a pound of halibut (skin on), heated up my grill to medium, threw the fish on skin-side down for about 15 minutes, and topped it with my new favorite sauce. You can get crawfish tails here in the valley at Atkinson’s or substitute some shrimp instead.

Crawfish Extraordinaire

Here’s a recipe from one of my favorite sources, LA Conservationist, a publication of Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries. Judalee (my mom) found this recipe and used it as a topping for panned trout. The recipe is written to use as an appetizer or a sauce for noodles. Cooks note: depending on how spicy you want it, I usually drain the crawfish and season the tails with Tony’s or Old Bay before I sauté them into a sauce.

1 pound cooked crawfish tails
1/2 stick butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 medium onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons parsley, minced
2 tablespoons green onion, minced
1/2 cup white wine
1 cup heavy cream
salt, pepper and paprika
(I think morels would really make this sauce pop)

Melt butter in a large saucepan. Add flour and stir until lightly cooked. Add onion, garlic, parsley and green onion and cook until onions are clear. Next, add crawfish and cook over a low fire about 10 minutes. Add white wine and simmer until blended. Slowly add cream and simmer over low fire. Do not let it boil or the cream will curdle. Add seasonings with extra paprika for a nice reddish color. Plate your fish and top with the sauce.

Recipe Twist: Serve this sauce toast points or in pasta shells for appetizers. I added my sauce to cooked noodles for a wonderful crawfish pasta.