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APRIL 2008
By CINDA CHAVICH
(Lake Charles, Louisiana) - Right about now, down in the bayous of southwestern Louisiana, it’s crawfish season.
“Hot Boiled Crawfish” signs, scrawled on blackboards outside restaurants, drive-thru “boiling stations”, and crawfish etouffee on every menu says it’s spring in Cajun country – the time when those prehistoric-looking little crustaceans crawl up out of the mud, into the sunshine, and then into the pot.
The season that starts in February continues until June, with big boils and festivals at the height of fishing, in late April and early May.
Also known as, crayfish, crawdads, mud bugs, crawdaddies, and “les ecrivesses”, most of the crawfish consumed here is technically “red swamp” or “white river” crayfish, a 3-inch creature that looks exactly like a seriously down-sized Nova Scotia lobster. Little wonder the displaced Acadians (a.k.a. Cajuns) embraced them as their own.
WIGGLY JIGGLY JEWELS
If you can’t immediately face a pile of bug-like crustaceans on your plate, you might want to ease into it with a bit of local kitsch – like the anatomically-correct plastic and metal critter I found among the other oh-so-tacky souvenirs at the local party store.
This Louisiana crawdad is not exactly edible, but with googley eyes and tiny claws bouncing on miniature springs, it makes a damn decent cat toy.
A THREE-POUND PLATTER
In Cajun country, a three-pound platter of boiled crayfish (a pizza-pan sized basket piled high) is a single serving appetizer. Most cooks estimate 3-5 pounds per person for a meal but local men claim they can eat ten.
There’s not much to eat in a 2- or 3-inch mud bug – a pound of tail meat has only 80 calories and it takes some time to get at it. But the peeling ritual is pretty simple. Just break the crawfish in half and toss the head, then pinch the tail and pull out a sliver of sweet meat. Repeat (many times).
BETTER ON A BUN
Order up a crawfish Po’ Boy – the answer to the submarine sandwich in these parts. The best Po’Boys – like the ones at Neptune’s Café in Elton – are served on a soft, French-bread bun, and stuffed with sliced tomatoes, crunchy lettuce and golden, deep-fried crawfish tails. This is the easiest way to eat your crawdads, since someone else does the peeling and you’ll barely recognize the bug under all of that batter.
Another amazing way to combine your bread and crawfish is the pistolette, a small crusty roll that’s been partially hollowed out, deep fried (of course), and filled with a scoop of creamy crawfish etouffee, that classic Cajun stew thickened with spicy brown roux. Addictive and perfectly done at Steamboat Bill’s in Lake Charles.
DISCOVER YOUR INNER CATHOLIC
In Louisiana, crawfish season conveniently coincides with Lent, and the fish-on-Friday fast tradition, so the typical Friday night feed is none other than the big ole’ crawfish boil.
But its hard to understand exactly what Cajuns are giving up – what with all of the beer, corn, potatoes, peeling crawfish and general merrymaking, a crawfish boil is always a serious party.
The secret to a perfect Crawfish Boil is the spice mixture that goes into the water – a combination your average Cajun guards like the family jewels. Most cooks doctor up commercial boil mixes (like Zataran’s) which always contain copious amount of cayenne pepper. Crawfish farmer Burt Tietje admits it’s ground cloves that makes his boil special.
GET DOWN ON THE FARM
The prairie of southwestern Louisiana is as flat as Saskatchewan but not nearly as dry – in fact, solid ground quickly turns into boggy wetlands sliced with watery lakes and snaking bayous as you head south to the Gulf, which is where crawfish live in the wild.
Thanks to oil exploration, pipelines, canals and other development which is destroying Lousiana’s wetlands (experts estimate that 75 square kilometers of wetland is lost each year), the crayfish industry has moved onto the farm – specifically into the off-season rice fields. Crayfish are “seeded” into the ponds before rice is planted in the spring and the adults burrow into the mud before the fields are drained. After the rice harvest, the ponds are re-flooded in the fall and a new crop of mud bugs emerge, to be trapped in conical wire traps, between January and June. Farmers cruise their fields in amphibious crawfish combines – a hybrid boat with wheels – to empty traps every day or two.
Most of the crawdads consumed in the US come from Louisiana and 85 per cent of the crawfish harvest comes from farms – more than 100 million pounds of mud bugs a year. Harvest peaks between March and May. Plan a group Crawfish Tour (20 or more) and visit a working crawfish farm, then help cook crawfish (1-800-264-5521).
HIT THE BOILING POINT
In crawfish season, temporary “boiling points” pop up on backroads across southern Louisiana. These are basic drive-thru crawdad stands, where you can pick up a 10-pound brown paper bag of hot, steamy crayfish, spiced up with lemon and seasoning, for a feast at home (or in your car).
Also known as, crayfish, crawdads, mud bugs, crawdaddies, and “les ecrivesses”, most of the crawfish consumed here is technically “red swamp” or “white river” crayfish, a 3-inch creature that looks exactly like a seriously down-sized Nova Scotia lobster. Little wonder the displaced Acadians (a.k.a. Cajuns) embraced them as their own.
WIGGLY JIGGLY JEWELS
If you can’t immediately face a pile of bug-like crustaceans on your plate, you might want to ease into it with a bit of local kitsch – like the anatomically-correct plastic and metal critter I found among the other oh-so-tacky souvenirs at the local party store.
This Louisiana crawdad is not exactly edible, but with googley eyes and tiny claws bouncing on miniature springs, it makes a damn decent cat toy.
A THREE-POUND PLATTER
In Cajun country, a three-pound platter of boiled crayfish (a pizza-pan sized basket piled high) is a single serving appetizer. Most cooks estimate 3-5 pounds per person for a meal but local men claim they can eat ten.
There’s not much to eat in a 2- or 3-inch mud bug – a pound of tail meat has only 80 calories and it takes some time to get at it. But the peeling ritual is pretty simple. Just break the crawfish in half and toss the head, then pinch the tail and pull out a sliver of sweet meat. Repeat (many times).
BETTER ON A BUN
Another amazing way to combine your bread and crawfish is the pistolette, a small crusty roll that’s been partially hollowed out, deep fried (of course), and filled with a scoop of creamy crawfish etouffee, that classic Cajun stew thickened with spicy brown roux. Addictive and perfectly done at Steamboat Bill’s in Lake Charles.
DISCOVER YOUR INNER CATHOLIC
In Louisiana, crawfish season conveniently coincides with Lent, and the fish-on-Friday fast tradition, so the typical Friday night feed is none other than the big ole’ crawfish boil.
But its hard to understand exactly what Cajuns are giving up – what with all of the beer, corn, potatoes, peeling crawfish and general merrymaking, a crawfish boil is always a serious party.
The secret to a perfect Crawfish Boil is the spice mixture that goes into the water – a combination your average Cajun guards like the family jewels. Most cooks doctor up commercial boil mixes (like Zataran’s) which always contain copious amount of cayenne pepper. Crawfish farmer Burt Tietje admits it’s ground cloves that makes his boil special.
GET DOWN ON THE FARM
The prairie of southwestern Louisiana is as flat as Saskatchewan but not nearly as dry – in fact, solid ground quickly turns into boggy wetlands sliced with watery lakes and snaking bayous as you head south to the Gulf, which is where crawfish live in the wild.
Thanks to oil exploration, pipelines, canals and other development which is destroying Lousiana’s wetlands (experts estimate that 75 square kilometers of wetland is lost each year), the crayfish industry has moved onto the farm – specifically into the off-season rice fields. Crayfish are “seeded” into the ponds before rice is planted in the spring and the adults burrow into the mud before the fields are drained. After the rice harvest, the ponds are re-flooded in the fall and a new crop of mud bugs emerge, to be trapped in conical wire traps, between January and June. Farmers cruise their fields in amphibious crawfish combines – a hybrid boat with wheels – to empty traps every day or two.
Most of the crawdads consumed in the US come from Louisiana and 85 per cent of the crawfish harvest comes from farms – more than 100 million pounds of mud bugs a year. Harvest peaks between March and May. Plan a group Crawfish Tour (20 or more) and visit a working crawfish farm, then help cook crawfish (1-800-264-5521).
HIT THE BOILING POINT
In crawfish season, temporary “boiling points” pop up on backroads across southern Louisiana. These are basic drive-thru crawdad stands, where you can pick up a 10-pound brown paper bag of hot, steamy crayfish, spiced up with lemon and seasoning, for a feast at home (or in your car).
The set-up is simple – rows of giant steel vats of boiling water and spice, and hand-crank rigs that lower full sacks of crawfish into the drink, then haul them back out when they’re bright red and steamy.
Get ‘em while they’re hot.
JAMBALAYA, CRAWFISH PIE, FILE GUMBO
Like the old Hank Williams song says, it’s all good.
But tonight “my cher ami-o” is that tender little crawfish tail smothered in a creamy etouffee and crisply deep fried, like they do so well in the South. At casual local restaurants, like Nott’s Corner in Lake Arthur, the fried eggplant piroque is a divine dish, topped with a creamy scoop of crawfish etouffee. This is about as fancy as crawfish cuisine gets, but there’s also crawfish bisque, even crawfish cocktail. Get serious and order the Crawfish Platter, plates of crawfish tails fried in crispy batter, crawfish pies (turnovers) filled with spicy bits of crawfish meat, and piles of local rice topped with an etouffee of tender tail meat and sauce, enriched with the crawfish “fat” that adds to the love affair.
CHEAPER BY THE SACK
A sack of live crawfish weighs about 30-40 pounds – big mesh bags filled with a scrabbling cargo.
Buy crawfish live, direct from the farm or a regional distributor. The price bounces between $.50 and $2 a pound, depending on supply, demand and size. Wild crawfish come out of the Atchafalaya River Basin but the catch is down this year, keeping prices high, but not as high as 2006. After Katrina, then Rita, smacked into the rural southwest, crawdads were scarce – a 35-pound sack cost $100 instead of the usual $25.
A sack should 6-8 hungry Cajuns, with the requisite corn and potatoes in the boiling pot. Mudbugs are purged in salt water and rinsed with a garden hose, before boiling with lemons and spices in big outdoor cauldrons set on portable propane burners, then fired into a cooler (aka ice chest) for 10 minutes to steam.
Pour the whole soggy mess out on a picnic table, covered with newspapers, and dig in.
CHEAPER BY THE SACK
A sack of live crawfish weighs about 30-40 pounds – big mesh bags filled with a scrabbling cargo.
Buy crawfish live, direct from the farm or a regional distributor. The price bounces between $.50 and $2 a pound, depending on supply, demand and size. Wild crawfish come out of the Atchafalaya River Basin but the catch is down this year, keeping prices high, but not as high as 2006. After Katrina, then Rita, smacked into the rural southwest, crawdads were scarce – a 35-pound sack cost $100 instead of the usual $25.
A sack should 6-8 hungry Cajuns, with the requisite corn and potatoes in the boiling pot. Mudbugs are purged in salt water and rinsed with a garden hose, before boiling with lemons and spices in big outdoor cauldrons set on portable propane burners, then fired into a cooler (aka ice chest) for 10 minutes to steam.
Pour the whole soggy mess out on a picnic table, covered with newspapers, and dig in.
GUMBO YA YA
Gumbo is synonymous with family gatherings in Cajun country and nothing says rural Louisiana like a seafood gumbo loaded with Gulf shrimp, crabmeat and, of course, crawfish tails.
To make gumbo from scratch, as most Cajun cooks always say, start with a roux. In Jennings, the local Southern Bar-B-Que company makes roux in a jar (and sells it at Wal-Mart where you’ll also find frozen, peeled crawfish tails). Or enjoy a thick bowl of homestyle seafood gumbo at Cajun Tales Seafood Restaurant in Welsh, where there’s also fried alligator, crawfish cocktail and etoufee on the menu (www.southerngumbotrail.com).
THE MUD AND THE BUGS AND THE BEER
After a couple of cool Abita Ambers (the craft beer down here), it’s really no problem to suck a mud bug – that is, put your lips around the severed head, inhale and enjoy all of the bright yellow “fat” and juicy spice that lies within.
Only serious Cajun wannabes and experts need to perfect this art but you will get into the groove if you sign up for the crawfish eating contest at the 48th Annual Crawfish Festival May 2-4 in Breaux Bridge. Laissez les bon temps rouler!
(This story first appeared in the Globe and Mail newspaper)
©Cinda Chavich 2008
FOOD TOURISM: CRAWDAD SEASON IN CAJUN COUNTRY
Steamed for peeling, fried in po’boys or in spicy gumbo and etouffee, crayfish season says spring has arrived in Louisiana.
photos by Cinda Chavich
