Crawfish Etouffée and The Trinity

In an effort to reduce the meat in our diet a bit, we picked up a package of frozen crawfish from the St. Lawrence Market last week.   I long to go to New Orleans to eat fresh crawfish by the bucketful but haven't been so lucky in life yet.  One day....

While I am not a great afficiando of Cajun or Creole food, I really was first introduced to this type of food by none other than Emeril Lagasse over 10 years ago when the Food Network first came to Canada.  While back then I found his stilted food presentation skills underwhelming on Essence of Emeril, the food he turned out was extremely interesting and flavourful, so I bought Louisiana Real and Rustic and have made many things from it over the years, including variations on Gumbos and his Ham Hock and Sweet Potato Soup (both to die for).  As time went by, however, with every "BAM!" he made, we became less and less enchanted with the show as it seemed to become so much more about the celebrity chef than the food itself, which is what brought him into our homes to begin with.  I never lost interest in the food of course.

So what is an etoufée anyway, right....  According to Emeril, the word étouffée means "smothered," and in Cajun and Creole cooking generally refers to anything cooked in its own juices, sometimes with a bit of water or stock.  Crawfish are freshwater crustaceans which look like tiny lobsters and which have extremely sweet and tender tail meat.  So I guess Crawfish Etoufée is basically smothered crawfish.

As is the case in every Creole recipe I have ever made, this recipe calls for the holy trinity. Generally, a "trinity" refers to the three cornerstone ingredients of a particular cuisine, a trio of specific ingredients that are combined together and sautéed to become the flavour base of many dishes. These 3 ingredient combinations appear as the basis for many cuisines, such as mirepoix - the basis of French cooking, which is a combination of onion, celery and carrot.  In other countries that border the Mediterranean Sea, the trinity is comprised of garlic, onion and tomato and are called by different names such as refogado in Portuguese, soffritto in Italian, and sofrito in Spanish.  In Phillipean cooking, the same basic combination is called ginisá.  

In Chinese cooking, the trinity is scallion, ginger and garlic, similar to Indian cooking which favours onion, ginger and garlic.  Greek food favours olive oil, lemon juice and oregano, and galangal (thai ginger), kaffir lime leaves and lemon grass are the basis for much Thai cooking.  Obviously, I could go on and on and on.....but in Creole cooking the trinity is comprised of onion, bell pepper and celery.

This is our "lightened" version of Crawfish Etoufée with far less butter than some recipes I have seen.

2 tbsp buttter

2 cups chopped onion

1 cup chopped celery

1/2 cup chopped bell pepper

1 pound crawfish tails (we can only get frozen in Toronto)

2 bay leaves (we were lucky enough to get fresh this week)
1 cup water + 1 tbsp flour for a slurry
1/4- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbsp chopped parlsley
3 tbsp chopped green onion

Salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in a large skillet or non-stick pan. Add onion, celery and bell pepper and cook until softened, approx. 10-12 minutes. Add crawfish and bayleaves, and reduce heat to medium. Cook an additional 10 minutes or so, until crawfish release their liquid.  Season with salt and pepper.

Dissolve flour an cayenne in water to make a slurry, an add to crawfish trinity mixture.  Season with salt and pepper if needed.  Stir until the mixture boils slightly and starts to thicken, about 3-4 minutes.  Sprinkle with parsley and green onion.  Don't forget to remove the bay leaves before serving!

Serve over white rice.