I feel the need to relate the rest of the story. For my 60th birthday we went to New Orleans, had a great time and the highlight was going to the Crescent City Cooking School, http://www.crescentcitycooks.com/ We made Seafood Gumbo and Crawfish Etoufee. Both were stellar and some of the best food we’d eaten on trip. I’ve made the Etoufee several times since, but never with Crawfish. So I went out of the way for this Anniversary dinner to find some.
I’m prepping all the ingredients, Onions, red and green bell peppers, celery, garlic, scallions and parsely and of course the Crawfish which are in the bag, in a bowl of water, defrosting in the sink. And yes I’m having a beer or two and maybe a glass of wine, by the time I check the Crawfish and discover the leak. I squeeze the bag to see if they’re still frozen, they weren’t, and out oozes Crawfish juice from the hole. It’s kind of orange and smells faintly fishy, but not bad fishy and I did wonder if they were still OK. Might have been, but I wasn’t taking the chance and tossed them in the garbage and starting swearing.
No way I could run to the store after a few beers, the store is 8 miles from my house. I was standing in the kitchen trying to formulate some alternate plan that would still be Etoufeeish. What’s in the fridge. I had some left over Italian chicken sausage, but hardly enough to substitute for the all the Crawfish. I dug in the freezer and found a very old bag of shrimp, likely freezer burned beyond redemption, but I started them defrosting. In the garage freezer I had some dungeness crab I’d pulled from the sea about a year ago, they were vacuum sealed and probably still good, and I started them defrosting. Maybe in 30 minutes I could start pulling out the crab meat.
At that point I decided to have more wine and my lovely wife decided the kitchen was a bad place to be and went for garden tour. She is very wise. I checked the crab after 30 minutes of soaking in water and it was still as hard as a rock. This was going to take for fuck ever. I put them in a bowl and popped’em in the microwave. Zap, check. Still frozen. Zap, check. Getting better. One more zap and it was workable. It was one whole crab, cleaned and split before sealing and after pulling it was maybe 3/4 of a cup. If the shrimp is ok this is going to work. Start peeling shrimp and after the first one I can see they are pulpy and white with freezer burn and totally worthless. This is not going to work.
Back to the garage freezer and I find a bag of chicken wings I’d vacuum sealed from a chicken I’d parted out with a date of july 2016. I realized right then that I’m pretty bad about putting stuff in the freezer and using it in a timely manner. I defrost the wings and they look pretty good. Cut of the tips, and separate the wing parts and drop them in the dutch oven. They are cooking up nicely.
I get those cooked and put aside. I cut and cook the Italian sausage and put that aside and start the Etoufee base. Roux, aromatics, stir, stir, have more wine and stir some more. Add some tomatoes, and stir some more. Scrape the bottom of the pan and stir some more…and more wine. Add chicken stock and all the meat and let it simmer while I get some rice going. 30 minutes later I add scallions and parsley and let it cook for another 5 minutes. Finally it’s time to eat.
It smells pretty damn good, we serve up, and head to the table for a bit more wine and a toast. To my dear sweet wife, who has put up with my shenanigans for 28 years, I love you. Salute’. We start to eat and it tastes pretty damn good too.
Cheers.
