Weekly Dish

To celebrate our Mardi Gras vacation from school (we’re off until Thursday!), I decided I should make a meal using the rich culinary heritage of southern Louisiana. Crawfish season is well underway here–they usually become widely available in January–so they seemed an obvious choice. Having already learned how to make the more traditional etouffee, I wanted to try something a little different.

When I worked at the Brick-Oven Cafe in Jackson, we served a crawfish pasta dish that was one of our most popular. The sauce was laden with cream, butter, and cheese, and I didn’t want anything quite that heavy, but the distinct Louisiana flavoring, I remembered, came from the combination of the crawfish and the Cajun-spiced ham called tasso.

After finding tasso in the deli at my neighborhood grocery store, David and I set out for the famous fish market here in town, Tony’s. This was our first trip there, and it was quite an experience. We entered a loud, concrete-floored room and met a tank of fresh lobsters on our left and catfish swimming in water-filled troughs on our right. On the back wall are two counters–on the left side you can buy already-prepared dishes like crawfish pie and jambalaya, and on the right, you buy crawfish, shrimp, and other fresh fish. I wanted to buy the crawfish live, so that we could boil them ourselves, but only the already-boiled ones were available.

To make the pasta, I peeled the crawfish, tossing the heads and tail shells into a large stockpot, and the tail meat into a separate bowl. I boiled the shells with a lemon and salt to make stock, and then gathered the other ingredients to make the sauce.

Two tricks make this dish full of flavor: the first is that you cook the tasso in a little olive oil in the pot you are going to use for the roux. The ham gives off its spicy flavor and provides a little bit of fat so you don’t have to use so much butter. The second trick is to boil the pasta in equal parts water and crawfish stock. The stock is rich with the spice from the crawfish shells and imparts that flavor to the noodles.

The results were delicious, if I do say so myself. The ridges in the rigatoni provided the perfect place for the sauce to stick, and the consistency of the sauce worked well to evenly coat the crawfish, ham, and noodles. Add a piece of crusty bread and a glass of dry white wine. . .and we had ourselves a very happy Monday-before-Mardi Gras indeed.

Cajun Crawfish Pasta

3 pounds crawfish, cooked
1 lemon
1 pound rigatoni
1 t. olive oil
1/2 pound tasso
2 T. butter
1 T. olive oil
1/4 cup flour
1 yellow onion
3/4 cup chopped tomatoes
1 T. Kosher salt
2 cups stock

For the stock: Shell the crawfish, piling the heads and shells into a large stockpot. (Reserve the tail meat). Add a quartered lemon and a palmful of salt and cover with water. Bring to a rolling boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for at least 20 or 30 minutes (the longer you simmer, the more flavorful the stock will be). Strain off the liquid and discard the solids.

Cook the pasta in equal parts stock and water (I used 2 cups of each for a pound of rigatoni). Drain when al dente and set aside.

Heat a teaspoon of olive oil in a large pot or skillet over medium (I used the same pot I cooked the noodles in). Add the ham and cook, stirring until the pieces are a golden brown, about 10 minutes. Remove the ham, but reserve the fat. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of butter. When the butter has melted, stir in the flour. Cook over medium-low, stirring, until the roux turns a light brown. This step took me about 10 minutes. Add the chopped onion and stir to coat with the roux. Cook over medium until very soft, 15-18 minutes. Add the chopped tomatoes and cook for another couple of minutes. Season with salt.

Stir in 2 cups of stock and cook, stirring, until smooth. Stir in the crawfish tails, the ham, and the pasta. (Note: If you want the pasta to be saucier, you can always add more stock; I wanted a thick consistency that would coat the noodles and meats rather than a thin sauce.) Cook for about a minute until everything is nicely blended and warmed through. Serve immediately.

Posted: Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 10:34 am Filed under: Main Dish, Meat, Pasta, Seafood, Holidays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.