May celebrates my brother’s birthday as well as his girlfriend of 9 years.  To start the month of birthday celebrations, my parents held a crawfish boil for Jason and Cree.  “HAPPY BIRTHDAY,” we shouted and enjoyed ourselves to the hilt, each of us going home with crawfish filled bellies and extra crawfish for our fridges and freezers.  It was supposed to be THE EVENT to celebrate both birthdays.  And Jason and Cree were thrilled with it.

I kept waiting to see if that would really be it.  My mom, God bless her, is a kind woman who does all sorts of stuff for her children.  I know her; I know what she’s like.  And as expected, I got the phone call I’d been waiting for:  “Come over Sunday.  We’re holding a special birthday dinner for Cree.”  “Okay,” say I, chuckling on the inside.  “What’s for dinner?”  “Crawfish bisque,” she replied.  I fell down on my knees in sweet surprise and thanked the fates for such wonderful parents, that crawfish is in this world, and that someone long ago thought of bisque.  And I immediately canceled any plans I might have been contemplating.

Crawfish bisque is hands down one of my absolute favorite dishes my mom and her sister make.  And when they announce they are making one, then you drop absolutely everything and you show up.  Period.  End of story.  No arguments.  Because this spectacularness only comes around every 3-5 years, and its not a dish that is easily found in restaurants.  And when it is found, it is often lacking.  Quite lacking indeed.

A crawfish bisque takes at least 1 1/2 days to prepare, and that’s taking a few shortcuts.   But it is absolutely delicious.  And this is why you drop everything, and you show up.  Ready to help, because it is labor intensive.  And ready to eat, because if you’re at my parents house you can be sure there is going to be enough to feed a small army.

I showed up early at my parents’ house on Sunday morning.  I was eager to help, and to take pictures of part of the process.  Saturday, my mother and father spent the day preparing to cook the bisque on Sunday.  Crawfish bisques can be made a number of ways, some tomato based and some not.  My parents’ bisque is not tomato based, and resembles a stew.  To prepare, Saturday they went to their local seafood market and purchased 2 packs of fresh, never frozen, crawfish tails that were already peeled, a large package of already cleaned crawfish heads (the shells), and a sack of crawfish.  A large majority of the sack of crawfish were scalded and peeled.  The larger claws were reserved.  The rest of the sack they made a small boil to eat themselves.  In the end, they had 7 pounds of crawfish tails, 4 pounds for the stuffing and 3 pounds for the bisque itself.  Anyone who’s ever made a crawfish bisque knows that’s alot of stuffing and alot of bisque.

To give you an idea of the process of this particular dish, it is almost like making a stew twice.  Saturday, Mom made a roux, seasoning it with onions, bell peppers, celery and all those delish things that makes a roux a roux.  While the roux bubbled, cooked, and simmered, she prepared the 4 pounds of crawfish.  All four pounds of peeled crawfish tails were lightly sauteed in a skillet.  Once sauteed, three pounds of the crawfish were ground using a food processor.  The remaining pound was reserved.  My parents like whole crawfish tails in the stuffing, and I must admit, it’s good.  Once the roux was finished, my mother combined the ground and whole crawfish tails mixing them with bread crumbs and roux.  This mixture becomes a nice stuffing like consistency as you mix.  If it is too watery, you just sprinkle more bread crumbs.  Once finished, the stuffing was placed in a bowl, covered well, and placed in the refrigerator for use the next day.

I arrived at my parents’ house at 8:30 a.m. Sunday morning eager and ready to help.  Mom had agreed to let me take pictures of the process Sunday to share here with all of you.  I’m so excited to share this process.  This is a most amazing dish if you ever get the chance to try it.  I highly recommend it if you do.

The first thing mom did was to prepare her seasonings for the roux base she would make for the bisque. Onion was diced and put into a small saucepan ontop the stove with a bit of water.

To the onions, she added a number of frozen seasonings, including bell pepper, green onion, and celery.  Some freshly chopped garlic went in as well.  More water went into the pot.  This seasoning base was cooked down until the onions were translucent.  Then, out came mom’s gumbo pot.  I asked her why she didn’t just cook it all in the one large pot.  She said that by cooking her seasonings down in saucepan first, she could make sure things didn’t stick to the bottom of her gumbo pot.  I can see that.  The gumbo pot is a large, tall pot, sometimes hard to reach all the way down to the  bottom when things are hot, bubbling, and cooking.

Now, some might cringe as I show you one of mom’s shortcuts: Tony Chachere’s Instant Roux Mix.  We use this stuff all the time.  It’s great.  It beats having to make such a large roux on your own.  It tastes fine.  If you attempt this, I say, use it.  Anyhow, the roux mix with water was added to the pot, and the pot transferred to the stove.  The cooked down seasonings were added to the roux.  As you can see from the picture (though a bit blurry), there are some seasonings that are slightly stuck to the pot.  It’s a moisture thing; not a burnt thing.

More roux mix was poured into the saucepan.  Water was added and it was all swished around to loosen up the seasonings stuck to the bottom of the saucepan.  All of this was poured into the large pot ontop the stove.

Yumminy, Yumminy.  Look at that roux, in the pot, on the stove (stove not pictured).  The house is of course smelling good right now.  Other things were added to this roux as well, like Tony Chachere’s seasoning and salt.  As our roux bubbles and simmers, its time to turn our attention to the stuffing and the crawfish heads.

The stuffing mentioned and described above is stuffed into the cleaned crawfish heads, or I should say their shells.  There are ways to do this without this shell; however, a traditional bisque uses these shells.  To stuff the shell, first you hold the shell open with your fingers, being careful not to crack it in half.  With a spoon, stuffing is shoved into the shell.  Using a finger, smooth it out a bit.

You repeat this process until everything is stuffed.  For this batch of bisque, we stuffed approximately 120 heads.  It took time.  It took patience.  It took holding ourselves back from eating the stuffing as we went along.  Because we had stuffing galore.  While each of these shells are stuffed generously, we still had nearly 3/4 of the bowl left of stuffing.  This was separated into three smaller containers: 1 for each of us (parents, me, brother).  It is now in my freezer, awaiting future fun use.

By the way once you finish all this stuffing, you should always take a moment to sit back and admire your work for a second.  If so inclined, take a sip of beer or water.  Then, get ready for the next step: the flouring.

Each stuffed shell is then individually dipped into all-purpose flour.  All exposed areas of the stuffing are given a light coating of flour.  This helps keep the stuffing in the crawfish shell once the shells are placed in the stew/bisque.

As the shells are floured, they are placed back onto the baking sheet with the floured side facing up.  The baking sheets are placed into a preheated oven set to broil.  Stuffed shells are broiled just long enough for the stuffing and flour to take on a bit of browning.  They are watched carefully to avoid burning and pulled out as soon as they are done.

With the crawfish heads stuffed and browning, it is time to assemble the remainder of the bisque.  The crawfish tails and claws saved from the previous days work are pulled from the refrigerator and placed into the large gumbo pot.  Additional seasonings are added to taste, such as salt or more Chachere’s.

The last addition to the bisque are the stuffed heads.  Once added, the bisque is allowed to cook a bit more, heating up the stuffed shells the rest of the way.

Once finished, the bisque is normally served over white, long grain rice.  I can’t even describe how delicious this is.  I’ll just say yum in my tum and leave it at that!  Bon appetit!