Tradition

This year, Gillian helped me make our crawfish etouffe. Most years, I am feverishly making enough to feed 50 for our Samedi Gras party, but this year it's all for us. Last year the poor weather resulted in a turnout was about half the usual, and we realized it was a bit much with everything on our plates at the moment. So, we are opting for an intimate dinner with a few friends in lieu of the grande fête this year. At any rate, Gilly and I cooked together. We often cook together, but this is special. This year, we made a Charbonnet family tradition our own and we made our roux with mounds of delicious butter and flour (Gillian was concerned, initially when I told her we were going to cook flour...but I realized why when she said, very worriedly, "I don't wanna cook the flowers!!"...her fears were soothed when I showed her that this was a different kind of flour for cooking). Gillian was quite pleased to have her very own pot next to mine (I cook batches separately as to not water them down) and enjoyed watching the butter melt and the roux turn and adding more butter and "stir-stir-stirring!". We cooked our "holy trinity" and accompanying spices in the roux and added the liquid, which includes clam juice and more spices (including Tabasco, of course). Last part was adding the crawfish tail meat, and then letting the batch sit overnight to absorb the complexity of the flavors.

Last year I made the mistake of buying my butter at the corner market. I feel like it affected the quality of the roux and the overall flavor of the etouffe. It just wasn't as rich and the sauce seemed a little thin. This year, we went with the Gold standard of butter, whose cream content is beyond question. It looked and smelled rich and full of fat, like God intended. It tastes even better!!

Mama and G melting butter:

Gillian adding flour (not flowers) to the butter for browning to make the roux:

Browning the roux with constant stirring:

Starting to brown:

Adding the trinity + spices to saute in the roux:

Mixing the ingredients for part II:

She really like stirring, and she's very good at it :-):

The finished product-Mmmmmmmmmmm......delicious!