I cannot say enough how much I like love crawfish bisque.  It may well be my all-time favorite dish.  Growing up, my mother never made it, not once.  The first time I had it was at my best friend’s aunt’s.  That bowl set the bar very high.  My grandmother would make it every couple of years.  Maybe.  Sometimes less.  The reason you see it so infrequently is that, done correctly, it takes a lot of time.  All together, it probably takes a full day to prepare.

First, you need to boil crawfish.  Then pick them.  Then clean the heads.  Cleaning the heads is the worst part of preparing this dish to me.  Not because it is as gross as it sounds (it isn’t much more weird than peeling the tails) but because you have to snip off the noses of the crawfish.  This rips my fingers to shreds.  Here’s what four look like cleaned and ready to be stuffed:

Only 146 more to go.  Yes, the recipe I use (from Marcelle Bienvenu’s “Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic and Can You Make A Roux? A Family Album Cookbook” –great title, eh?) calls for 150 stuffed heads.  That’s a lot of heads!  Now, the next step is to stuff said heads.  To do that, you chop bell peppers, celery, onions, garlic, and crawfish tails and mix that together with stale french bread crumbs.  You then mix in more tails you did not chop and saute in oil with lots of salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper.

Cooling crawfish head stuffing.

Let the mixture cool.  Then stuff the heads and roll them in a mixture of seasoned and plain breadcrumbs.  They will look like this:

Bake them until golden brown in a 375° oven (about 20 minutes).  At this stage, go crack a beer.  And give yourself a high mark for Effort.  You have come far and done well.  You are clearly at the point of no return and the rest, as they say, is a cakewalk.

Okay.  Now, the recipe calls for sauteing more crawfish tails (the recipe calls for a total of four pounds of crawfish tails) with salt, cayenne pepper and paprika.  The recipe suggests 1 tablespoon of cayenne.  That will blow my mouth apart.  We used 1/2 tablespoon this time, and that seems juuust right.  Then you add warm water and roux to the pot.  Well, damn. If I hadn’t read ahead, I’d have been in a pinch because I make roux and don’t buy it.  So before I get going on this step, I make that roux first so that I can add it without having to take my cooking pot off the stove.

Pontchartrain Pete doing the work of the sous chef.

In yet another pot, saute green peppers, onions and celery until they are tender then add them to the main pot along with more water.  Cook vigorously for 2 minutes.  Add more water and cook for 15 minutes at a lower heat.  Then add green onions and parsley and let cook 10 minutes more.  Use this time to also cook a pot of rice.  Your hard work will be rewarded with a lush pot of this:

Everyone you know, and some you don’t, will invite themselves over for dinner.  Seriously.  It IS that good.

And the best thing is that this is one of those dishes that tastes better the next day after the flavors have had time to meld and relax.  So leftovers are as decadent, if not more so, than the first eating.

Bon appetit!

Crawfish boils are a common thing during summers in New Orleans.  I threw my first boil a couple of years ago and was amazed at the amount of work that goes into one.  Here’s a quick to-do list:

1. Order the crawfish in advance.
2. Buy groceries—veggies galore (this year, potatoes, onion, garlic—the typical trio—along with celery, lemons, broccoli, brussel sprouts, corn, artichokes, and mushrooms), sausage to throw in too, along with spices, salt, booze, napkins (and wet wipes), ice (day of), cokes (we in the South, or at least my family, call all sodas “cokes”), water, and garbage bags.
3. Cut the grass.
4. Board the dogs.
5. Sweep the porch.
6. Borrow and set up folding tables and chairs on newly cleaned porch to accommodate 30 people.
7. Put several fans (not less than three) on the porch.
8. Borrow second pot, burner, basket and cover.  Boiling goes quicker if you can do two pots at a time.
9. Fill propane tanks.
10. Be sure you have a tub for the crawfish to soak in pre-boil.
11. Pick up crawfish.
12. Prepare side dishes.
13. Set up pop-up tarp for the men-folk/boilers so they don’t fry in the sun.
14. Clean the house.
15. Bring ice chests down from attic.
16. Get koozies/huggies out of pantry.
17. Cut/prep veggies.
18. Purge the crawfish (sorry, fellas).
19. Boil the crawfish and the veggies.
20. Eat and enjoy!

Yes, they are a lot of work.  Almost as much work as will go into the crawfish bisque we will be making with the leftover crawfish.

Today was such a good day.  My sister and her husband and son arrived early, as did my aunt and uncle, to assist with getting things ready.  The women dressed Sun and prepared side dishes while I drove to the Marigny to get the birthday cake from NOLA Cafe and Bakery.  The men started boiling the seafood so it’d be ready when the guests arrived.

My husband also finally installed a swing on the porch for Sun.  She LOVED her swing.  How much?  She fell asleep in it!  Ok, that may have been because she still had fever and no nap, but it was darn cute.

I could write many other details of the wonderfulness of today—seeing friends and family that I see regularly and some not so often, drinking Pimms Cups, eating watermelon, enjoying my new teak furniture, laughing, relaxing, watching the rain—but what made today special was something less concrete than any one of these things, or even all of them combined.

Recovering from surgery still, I was FORCED to take things slow and not push to the extreme.  It caused me to be even more organized than I usually am for a party.  But as it got nearer and nearer to 1pm and I could see not every detail I wanted attended to was going to get attention, I didn’t resist or balk or scramble.  I just allowed it to be good enough.  I was confident that overall we were ready.

And those things that did not get attention, I promise you, no one noticed.  I was at peace all day.  As Sun ached with fever, we took turns holding her and caressing her and swinging her.  And she’d feel better or not or nap or not or laugh or cry.  But through it all, she was a delight.  My baby is turning into a little girl.  A gentle, wee bit shy, sweet little girl.  And mamma was mighty proud of her today, and mighty proud of her home, herself, her very life.

As I mentioned, returning from Dallas, we spent a night in Natchitoches (pronounced Nack-a-tush not Natch-i-toe-chis).  I was tired, CS was hungry.  I was content to call room service, but there was no restaurant in the hotel.  Instead, the hotel recommended a whopping two restaurants, Ryan’s and Mariner’s.  We don’t like Ryan’s so we headed to Mariner’s.  All I wanted was a cup of soup, so my expectations were pretty low.  I kept thinking it’d be funny if we ate Fried Green Tomatoes recalling that the movie was filmed here.

We drove up to a bucolic scene of the restaurant nestled on Cane River Lake overlooking fishing camps:

We walked in to a room whose wall facing the lake was all windows.  It was dusk.  It was lovely.

The menu gave a brief history of the city, and offered an extensive array of food choices.  I settled on a grilled shrimp salad.  CS was torn between the Stuffed Cajun Catfish (baked fillet with Rosetta’s seafood stuffing) and the Acadian (Tilapia fillet, blackened or baked, smothered with their award-winning crawfish etouffe).  He went with the waitress’s recommendation, the Acadian.

First they brought CS’s soup, lobster and crab bisque.  I love lobster and crab and a good bisque.  I didn’t order this myself, though I wanted soup, because I wasn’t sure it’d be any good and it would be too rich in any event.  It was rich, but was like silk.  The seafood was perfectly cooked and the seasonings were spot on.  It was a very good start.

Then they brought the entrees.  My grilled shrimp salad was your typical greens and dressing.  But those grilled shrimp were some of the best I’ve ever eaten.

Let me back up a minute.  I don’t eat seafood out of New Orleans very often.  It tends to be stereotypical, overpriced and quite disappointing.  Now, getting into Cajun land, Lafayette, Shreveport, Natchitoches, I ease up on my don’t-eat-seafood-out-of-town rule.  But you need to take care that you are in a good place and not been taken.  So, I was a bit cautious about eating at a seafood restaurant, especially leary of bad seafood.

So, these shrimp were grilled to perfection.  Something that is often not done in New Orleans.  These shrimp had grill marks on them!  And they tasted as good as they looked.  They were just the right size, not too small but not so large that they should be butterflied.  As good as they were, I could not finish them nor my salad.  CS would finish my shrimp, which is something he rarely does–finish my food–but these were just that good.

And then there was his Acadian.  This dish, even in my frail condition, was platonic.  No question this was remarkable.  Again, a little background.  I am not a fan of crawfish etouffe.  It tends to be a bit gritty to me and just something I don’t prefer.  As a matter of fact, when it comes to crawfish I like them boiled (well) the best.  I don’t like them cooked otherwise; I don’t like crawfish bread or crawfish Monica; I don’t like crawfish sausage or crawfish pasta.  These dishes just don’t do it for me.  So, I would have passed on a fish dish with crawfish etouffe covering it.  I’d have been missing out.

Mariner’s offered the best crawfish etouffe I have ever eaten.  In my life.  In my entire southern-Louisiana, 38 year long, life.  And CS agreed.  It was what etouffe is meant to be: spicy and hearty but not heavy and overly rich.

My skin absorbed the quiet and solitude this restaurant, this oasis, offered to me as I was convalescing.  I half wished to stay at this very spot for a week and enjoy the cool breeze that blew on the dock that we stood at after we ate.  It was so relaxing and picturesque.  On the dock, a father was standing with his two children and they were feeding catfish and turtles fish food.  I was informed that if you feed a catfish at the same time every day, you can train him; he’ll return day after day at the same time.

I have this dream of one day owning a fishing camp of my own.  I don’t think I want the dream to come true because then taxes would have to be paid, grass cut, floors cleaned, windows to board in hurricane season, etc.  But I have this vision in my head of owing a little place like the one just across the lake from Mariner’s (in the picture above).  And now I know where I’d like my imaginary camp to go, too.

The thing about doing cool stuff with other bloggers is, well, they BLOG about it before you get the chance.  Yesterday’s food orgy is captured by Pontchartrain Pete better than I could have captured it.  So click here to read about the best oyster po boy I’ve ever eaten followed up by the best sno-ball I’ve ever had (and that is saying a mouthful!).  Truly a grand eats day!

And then for breakfast, I had one of Katie’s Caramel Oat Chocolate Bars.  She gives away her secret recipe.  Go get it.  Now.  I’ll wait. . . . Back?  These bars are the perfect blend of sweet and salty and chewy and crunchy.  They feel homemade yet are rich and decadent.

So, as long as my friends keep posting great posts, I am left with nothing to do but give out the linky love.

So what have I been up to? I’ve been busy with a teething Sun (three teeth in one day!), buying patio furniture I just love (peanut shaped teak bench, coffee table and two chairs), making plans to visit with Katie and Pete at Parasol’s this afternoon (after attending SoMo’s daughter’s birthday party).  Oh, and hunting streetcar art; click here to check out the awesome pieces I’ve been seeing pop up around town for YLC’s Streetcar Named Inspire project.

Tis the season.  Crawfish season, that is.  And shrimp.  And really, it’s always crab season here in Louisiana.  Growing up in New Orleans, there are many things I took for granted and many things it seems my family actively sought to avoid.  But one Louisiana thing my family has always embraced is its seafood.

All of my childhood summers were peppered with crab boils, crawfish boils, shrimp boils. There is something that draws me to the formality involved in a boil, the ritualistic element: there’s the special large pot and burner, the paddle, the strainer basket, the spices, the vegetables, and, of course, the seafood.  Oh, and the large-handled spoon.  The spoon!  The spoon that is used to dip into the searing hot liquid to taste for spiciness while the seafood is boiling.

What I have tasted from the hand of my grandfather, father, uncles and brothers from that spoon–truly boiling, smoking hot spiced juices.  This is HEAVEN to me.  I once drank cups of this at a time (back when I didn’t know what sodium was).  Oh, me.

YatPundit changed his avatar on Twitter to a long metal spatula holding a crawfish over a boiling pot.  That image is so iconic in New Orleans.  How iconic?  Well, it reminded me of a puzzle I had growing up, a puzzle I still own and still build from time to time.  A puzzle purchased by my mother from D.H. Holmes Department Store.  I give you, “Bayou Banquet”:

I LOVE this picture!  It is so representative of Louisiana food and particularly a seafood boil: boiled crabs, shrimp, crawfish; lemons and vegetables to add to a good boil; oysters on the half-shell and stuffed peppers; cocktail sauce and Dixie beer; the Times-Picayune newspaper to cover the table; the notable Louisiana spices; the seafood basket and net; and French bread and gumbo.  How can you not want to live in a place where this is standard fare on a warm summer night?

For those of you here in NOLA that still call Dillards Holmeses out of habit, I leave for you this picture of the side of the puzzle box:

My funk is, finally, over.  Over. OVER. O.V.E.R.  And I hate to admit what it took, but I will

It took a day completely, fully, wholly, unattached.  Captain Sarcastic took Sun to Jazz Fest today, and because I had to work yesterday I was not in the office today.  Ten plus hours of me-time!  Ah, it was a luxury just to think of it.  I wanted to do NOTHING of the things I normally do; I needed to do something other than the same places with the same faces.

Yesterday on the twitter, talks were had about meeting for drinks this afternoon.  Things were settled on Cooter Brown’s.  Then, later in the evening on the twitter, Bud’s Broiler came up.  And before long, YatPundit and I had made plans to meet for lunch for a Number 4 and Number 3, respectively, each with cheese fries.

So once CS and Sun were off this morning, I spent an hour cleaning.  I got more cleaning done in that one alone-hour than I have in the past year!  It was amazing.

Then lunch.  I LOVE a burger at Bud’s Broiler; they are char-grilled and yummy.  But today the focus wasn’t on the food; it was on the company, the conversation.  We talked about blogging, twittering, lawyering.  We talked about the proposed church closings, cemeteries, where we went to high school.  We talked about being a cultural catholic, and about being a parent.  We talked and talked and talked.  No babies, no office calls.

After three and a half hours, I needed to leave.  I had meant to run to the knitting store between lunch and my next agenda item, but that fell to the wayside.  YatPundit and I parted and I drove to Old Metairie to meet Katie at Lovejoy Spa for a pedicure.  I haven’t had a pedicure since I was pregnant–a year and a half ago.  It was JUST what I needed.  Adult activities with adults with no children.  We talked about weddings and doctors and weddings OF doctors.  It was decadent.  I could have sat in that vibrating chair for two pedicures.

Then Katie and I parted–her to nap and me to head to Cooter Brown’s.  At Cooter Brown’s, Yat Pundit arrived and then WarriorEngineer. And so did my cousin and two of his friends.  We drank beers from “around the world.”  And I ate a dozen raw oysters.  Their oysters are some of the best in the city: super fresh, ice cold and salty.  Oh, and yeah, MORE cheese fries.  Damn, their cheese fries are amazing: hot discs of potatoes SMOTHERED in dripping hot melted cheese.

At the end of it all, I got a call from CS sounding downright frazzled.  This is a sound usually found in MY voice, not his.  All day at Jazz Fest alone with Sun–including an exploding diaper and port-o-lets–had taken its toll. I was needed back home.

Walking in the front door to a bathed Sun (Sun-bathed?) and an apologetic husband (he was sorry he’d interrupted my day alone–can you believe?), I was rejuvenated, refreshed.  I AM rejuvenated, refreshed.

I am appreciative of the blessings of my life, of my family, of this lil blog o’ mine, of the comments and e-mails you, my amazing readers, sent me regarding my last post.

I am a lucky gal.  And all I needed was a bit of exclusive me-time to feel it all again.

I had to pick Sun up from the Westbank today.  Seems I am across the river often these days.  Today I passed Mosca’s twice.  Once was hard, twice was really hard.  Especially because YatPundit kept twittering about how he had cooked Mosca’s Chicken a la Grande last night.

Over dinner, I mentioned Mosca’s, planning a trip back to eat dinner.  A diner close to us mentioned a rumor he’d heard about Al Capone sending his chef to New Orleans to learn from Mosca.  I have no idea if this is true.

Then later tonight, YatPundit posted about his home-cooked Mosca’s dinner last night.  He used a sauce Mosca’s sells in the grocery store.  And YP mentions yet another mob-themed rumor about Mosca’s in his post.

Oh, the allure of a mob-rumored hole in the wall restaurant in the middle of nowhere three cities away!  Yes, we will have to do a group dinner there soon.  Until then, I will just pretend that YatPundit’s post was also a scratch-n-sniff.  I can almost smell the garlic!

I have started and then resisted writing this post in the past because Angelo Brocato’s is a New Orleans icon and much can be said about it and I fear not doing it justice.  With that caveat (see the attorney in me kicking in?!), I will proceed for the benefit of those unaware of this spot of Heaven in New Orleans, like Katie. 

Angelo Brocato’s is an Italian ice cream parlor that has been a part of New Orleans for over a century.  It was originally located at 617 Ursulines Avenue in the French Quarter, and its name is still in the tile at its original corner (as is the curious second entrance that is tiled “Ladies Entrance.”)  They have been located at their current Mid-City location (at Carrollton and Canal, on the Canal/Carrollton streetcar line) for as long as I can remember.

Katrina did a great deal of damage to Brocato’s.  They have placed a brass plaque above the inside door handle indicating the waterline:

You can click here to see more photos relating to their rebuild and opening day (September 23, 2006) post-Katrina.

So their history is a long and rich one.  And speaking of long, so is the line to get in.  There is ALWAYS a line here, even if you come at 2pm on a weekday afternoon.  In the evenings, there is usually a security guard to help maintain that line.  What’s inside is worth the wait.

Gelatos, spumoni, cassata, cannoli, Italian ices (nothing compares to their lemon ice on a hot New Orleans summer day), and Italian pastries, cookies and candies.  The cookies and candies are made from their own recipies: Biscotti, scadalina, fig cookies, pigniolata, and my mother-in-law’s favorite, what she calls their “bird seed cookies” (Italian sesame seed cookies). And they serve hot chocolate, tea and coffee.  The coffee they serve is good steaming cafe au lait, espresso, cappuccino, and cafe latte.  Just look at their menu and beautiful brass coffee machine:

And here’s a pic of just one of the candies you can buy loose on the counter, their licorice pastels:

They have over 20 flavors of gelatos.  But I have only tasted about four.  Because that fourth one was their Pistachio Nut (as opposed to their Pistachio Almond) and I about died of ecstacy.  The texture of that gelato!  Really, it gets in your system and when it wears off, you simple CRAVE it.  So my typical order, no matter how hot or cold outside, is a steaming cafe au lait and a cup of Pistachio Nut gelato.  And when I am sitting on an iron chair in their bustling parlor, all is well in the world.

Somehow I managed to skip lunch today. This NEVER happens. But by 2 o’clock, as hungry as I was, I was beginning to think about dinner. And if I then ate lunch, it’d ruin my dinner. So I did what an self-respecting foodie would do: I called my husband and asked if he’d like to go to Doson Noodle House with me for dinner. He did.

I learned of this place through some friends–they ordered for us to go and we ate at their home. This was about two months ago. And since then, I have thought about this noodle house a lot. I love Vietnamese food, and Katrina took out many of the good Vietnamese restaurants in the area. So this restaurant was a welcome addition to the NOLA restaurant scene. And I have been craving it for about a week now.

Enough history. Now onto the food. For starters, I ordered an iced coffee:

You know how you can order a Thai tea at Thai restaurants and you get this sweet, chilled, strong, creamy tea? It’s like that but coffee. It was hard to stop at one, it is so tasty, but I didn’t want to be up all night, as these are big. It’s worth stopping here just for this coffee.

Then we ordered the Spring Rolls (they recommend these on their menu):

Two rolls come with one order. And these rolls are BIG, each nestling three large shrimp. They are cool, filled also with noodles, cilantro, cucumber, and tofu. I could make a meal of this appetizer. The sauce is nutty with a dash of spice–they have more heat on the table that both CS and I took full advantage of.

Then for the main course: Vermicelli. CS got his with grilled chicken and I got mine with grilled pork. Here’s a shot of the pork vermicelli:

This plate is deceptive. This dish is ENDLESS. It defies you to eat it all. How much is it? I skipped lunch and was ready to gnaw off Sun’s left arm (it DOES resemble a dumpling) and was content to eat all I could. I fully expected to finish this tonight. I didn’t. Neither did CS. Between the two of us, I have enough for lunch tomorrow. If, that is, I can resist eating it later tonight. Because I am already Jonesin’ for it again even though I am still WAY STUFFED. How stuffed? I turned down Angelo Brocato’s gelato that was RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET. Yeah, that stuffed.

So, if Vietnamese cuisine is your thing, trust me, this unassuming spot will scratch your itch.