Crawfish Bread

As soon as March arrives, I start to crave one thing: crawfish. Crawfish season is typically March to June. This is when they're cheap, big, and easily available, and so it's also when you get to have crawfish boils, an integral part of my childhood. There's nothing like running around in the spring sunshine while someone boils up a huge batch of crawfish, red potatoes, corn, and sausages/hot dogs. When it's time to eat, they just dump it all into a big pile on a newspaper-covered picnic table, and everyone digs in. It's messy. It's hot. It's a lot of work, but oh man is it delicious.

Living outside of southern Louisiana makes it difficult to experience anything even close to a crawfish boil. Thankfully, Norfolk, VA holds a Cajun festival every summer, and one of the things they offer there is fresh boiled crawfish. It's WAY more expensive than they would be in New Orleans (like $5-6/lb at the festival rather than $2-3/lb in New Orleans) and doesn't come with all the awesome extras, but it's the closest I've come to the real thing since moving away.

Bang Bang Shrimp

I should preface this post by saying that I have never eaten at Bonefish Grill, where this is apparently a menu item. Our favorite local restaurant has an appetizer called Boom Boom Shrimp for which the menu description only says "You know the story. We stole it and made it better." Having heard a few times just how great these shrimp were, we decided to try them, even though we really didn't know what to expect at all. We were quite pleasantly surprised at what we received, fried shrimp coated in a sweet, creamy, rich sauce with a lot of Asian zing to it. When we asked what the "story" was behind them, that's when the owner told us that he improved upon the Bang Bang Shrimp from Bonefish Grill. I had no idea what ingredients the original recipe would include, much less this modified version, but I knew I wanted to try to make it at home because it was extra tasty.

Crab Pot Pie

I don't often watch Paula Deen on TV. I find her slightly grating. I don't know why; I just do. There's also the fact that just watching her cook makes me fatter. For whatever reason, one afternoon a couple weeks ago I put on an episode of her show, and she was making crab pot pie. That's not something I'd ever considered before. Chicken or turkey, sure, but crab? How have I not thought of this?

I used Paula's recipe more as an idea and a jumping off point than as any sort of guide. This recipe actually more closely resembles Justin's mom's chicken pot pie recipe, though it's not directly based on that either. Basically, Justin and I sat down and said, what vegetables are required for pot pie and what vegetables would be tasty with crab? From there we narrowed it down to those included in this recipe. If I made it again, I don't think I'd change a thing (other than to maybe use an egg wash on the pie crust to make it come out more golden brown). It was really weird for the first few bites, but once I got over the expectation of poultry flavors, I really liked this.

Crawfish Omelet

When I was a kid, we often got together for large, family brunches, lunches, and dinners with my mom's side of the family. Sometimes we ate at my grandparents' house, but often we went out--there are tons of great restaurants in New Orleans, after all.

One of the places we used to go was Elmo's. I remember that there were two older gentlemen who often played music while you ate--one played clarinet, but I can't for the life of me remember what the other one played. Flute? Keyboard? It doesn't matter really... I can specifically remember them playing "Blueberry Hill" while we dined at a nearby table. It seemed like those guys were always there, no matter when we went.

The best part of Elmo's though was the food, of course. From what I can remember, their menu was pretty much only seafood dishes, and about half of that was crawfish. I'm sure all of it was good, but I wouldn't know. The only thing I can ever remember ordering was the crawfish omelet. My mouth waters just thinking about it. Unfortunately, Elmo's is closed now, so there's no getting an omelet no matter how badly I want one. The only solution is to make one myself.