Folks this is not a quick and easy one, but Cajun cooking is more of a social event than a rush and eat thing. Try it, you might like it adn it is good for you. Enjoy, John LeBlanc Dehydrated Crawfish and Crawfish Etoufee Standing in line at a grocery store caused me to think of this one. All my life I have seen little packages of dried shrimp attached to a paper card in grocery stores all along the gulf coast. These little dried shrimp curl up no bigger than a penny and are sold in packages of 1 oz for $2.95. I often wondered what people did with them as they looked much more pathetic than the bait we used to throw away because it was too old. As I grew older, I learned there was a big dried shrimp industry stemming from the way Cajuns preserved shrimp for later use before the advent of refrigeration. To dry then, they were headed and salted and placed in large round hardware cloth cylinders that were tumbled in the hot sun. As they dried, the shells would come off. After sufficient drying, these were winnowed in much like rice or wheat to separate the shell from the meat. They were then used in a variety of shrimp recipes just as the fresh ones were. This gave me an idea. I boiled several pounds of shrimp in my favorite seasoning and then placed them in my electric dehydrator. Several hours later a product similar to those previously mentioned was obtained. Various recipes were tried such as gumbo and etoufe. It tasted OK, but not nearly as good as using fresh. The shrimp did not gain any appreciable size when rehydrated. I was pretty much disapointed with the results. I guess I just like fresh shrimp too much. One day while cooking crawfish etoufee, I got the idea to try dehydrating crawfish. Again, I boiled the peeled tail meat in my favorite seasoning and dipped them out of the pot through the rolling part of the boiling water so as to not get any of the fat on them. I placed them in the dehydrator until they were sufficiently dry. It took about four to five hours if I remember correctly. I usually don't pay too much attention to total time of things in the dehydrator preferring to just do it until they are done. The air temperature and humidity makes a lot of difference as to how long it takes them to dry. I don't cook by time either, just until it is done. After drying any meat, I always store it in ziplock bags in the freezer. I usually leave the bags open a few days in the freezer and find that they actually dry out a little more that way. The logic behind this is the frost buildup inside freezer bags. When using dehydrated crawfish, I take what I need and place them in a pot and simmer in seasoned water until fully rehydrated. They have a similar consistancy to cooked fresh crawfish but are slightly tougher and smaller. The flavor is the same and they do gain some size, but not back to the original size. All in all crawfish dehydrate and rehydrate to a more usable state than shrimp do. For extended trips or even short ones, I include crawfish in my dehydrated food and make etoufee, gumbo, pies and whatever else I want to make. When combined with the dehydrated ground beef I always carry, you can have a steak and lobster dinner if you want to. Well, sort of. Seven pounds of cooked, peeled crawfish will fill up into two one quart Nalgene wide mouth containers and will make several meals. We figure one- fourth pound of fresh crawfish per person when making various dishes, so you can figure how much you want to dehydrate. A one pound package makes just the right amount ofetoufee for my family of four. The dehydrated crawfish are delicious to eat dry as a snack, but I warn you that they require that you drink a lot of water at the same time. There are many recipes for crawfish both in cookbooks and on the internet. Each Cajun has their favorite variety. Below is mine. It is a rather mild one at that. Gumbo is almost the same as etoufee with roux added. Actually you start it with a roux, but no matter how much I try to tell you how to do it, you can't do it unless you have see it done, then do it under proper tutelage. I can show you, but I can't tell you how to do it. A cast iron pot is not necessary, but it is required. And yes, I said that correctly. Crawfish Etoufee One pound crawfish or equivalent dehydrated Two to three cloves garlic if desired One bunch cellery One bunch green onions One white or yellow onion One fourth pound butter Tex Joy Steak Seasoning (similar to Seasonall or Seasoned salt see www.texjoy.com Corn starch to thicken Melt the butter in a pot. Sautee the garlic if wanted. Add about one fourth of the crawfish and some seasoning and stir for a few minutes, then add the chopped celery and onions. Continue stirring and cook until the vegetables all start to wilt, add the rest of the crawfish and water and simmer for at least thirty minutes until the flavor and consistancy is just right. Add more seasoning if needed. If fuel is not scarce or you are using a wood fire, simmer as long as you can. Several hours is not too much. Remember that this is one dish that is always better the day after you cook it, so you cannot simmer it too long. Mix some cornstarch in a cup of cold water and stir into the simmering pot to thicken. Be sure to stir constantly after adding the cornstarch until removed from the fire to prevent sticking and burning the bottom. Serve over rice or straight out of the pot, whichever way you want it. Tricks of the trade. Add some seasoning early to blend the flavors throughout the cooking process. Do not add too much too soon as an overly seasoned dish is just not good to eat or is it real Cajun food. Blackened anything is not Cajun. That stuff is only sold to tourist in New Orleans. The dogs won't even eat it. It is properly seasoned if your customers need to add just a shake or two of seasoning to their own bowls for it to be just right. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
Niels wrote; (SNIP) >And JOHN - No; using ballast rocks to make stone soup does not qualify. > This kind of arbitrary rule takes the fun out of things. To show there are no hard feelings. Caribou Paunch Salsa Kill one summer caribou. Field dress and remove the stomach without disturbing the contents Tie off the openings Hang the paunch in the sun for seven to eight days depending upon the weather Remove fermented contents and spread on Ryvita and Quail's Gate Gewurtstraminer 1995. Rich in Vitamin C. One paunch serves and eight or two if the paunch is all you have to eat. Taste - exquisite Overall ease of cooking - No cooking involved, easy to prepare Shelf-life of ingredients - Average Caribou lives six to eight years Volume of packaging.- Not an issue since it is on the hoof Others - Leftovers make great caribou stew and the antlers can be used for decorating your canoe. (got that from Martha Stewart) Do I win if no one tries it out? Cheers, John Winters Redwing Designs Specialists in Human Powered Watercraft http://home.ican.net/~735769/ *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
At 03:43 PM 11/30/98 -0500, you wrote: >Hang the paunch in the sun for seven to eight days depending upon the >weather >Remove fermented contents Really John, I think you should have provided some alternate form of this recipe. Particularly at this time of year, with the increasing awareness of a good host's responsibility to see his guests safely home, most hosts are offering (drum roll please) non-alcoholic paunch! (ba-dum) Thank you, thank you very much. I'll be here all week at the fabulous Lounge Lizard room. Philip T. **************************************** Mountain Equipment Co-op 1655 West 3rd Avenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6J 1K1 Tel: 640-732-1989 Fax: 604-731-6483 email: pid_at_mec.ca Visit our website at: http://www.mec.ca ***************************************** *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
Philip T wrote; > >Really John, I think you should have provided some alternate form of this >recipe. Particularly at this time of year, with the increasing awareness of >a good host's responsibility to see his guests safely home, most hosts are >offering >(drum roll please) non-alcoholic paunch! (ba-dum) I must admonish my dear friend John Winters for not providing suitable safety instructions on the eating of Caribou paunch. Paunch is the primary propellant for Inuit crotch dirigibles so a good host ties his guests down to a handy rock. Once in Labrador I tied down a friend with a slip knot that came undone while he was molesting a young Inuit girl and it took three days for him to come down somewhere over Quebec. Unable to speak French he was arrested and jailed as a Canadian spy. The Canadian government had to buy his freedom with ten pounds of poutine and a truckload of American cigarettes. The expenditure set the government's balanced budget back four years and it would have been longer if they hadn't cut education spending by 21%. But I digress. The noted migration anthropologist Wayfarer Jones has uncovered pictographs in South America showing Inuit flying at low levels through the Andes leaving a vapour trail of partially digested paunch in the sky that was confused by gas station attendants in Las Vegas as flying saucer trails or, when wind currents were right, as the face of the Virgin Mary. No doubt these long distance revellers were the result of Inuit party goers improperly tied down at the bow and stern and without redundant nylon straps. To my knowledge no one has found any ancient Thule racks at excavated Inuit campsites. Is it possible that the Inuit would not have discovered Colombia and set up themselves up as drug lords if they had had Thule roof racks rather than stones to hold them done during parties? We cannot know. but Jones theorises that the Inuit colonised the west coast of South America and that Inuit facial characteristics can be seen in Pinochet today. This may be making a mole hill out of a despot. While Pinochet may have bad body odour there have been no reports of his being able to fly or even jump over a prostitute. I myself believe that the great stone figures on the Nazca plain are R.I.D.E. landing sites for drunken Crotch dirigible flyers where Indian County Mounties would snag the Inuit with large butterfly nets and incarcerate them until they either paid outrageous fines or submitted to unspeakable acts by proto-Deliverance death squads. I myself have seen such acts while doing research on the Chilean dugout canoe and believe me it is not a pretty sight. With the exception of Colombian drug lords I think the evidence strongly suggest that South America was populated by Egyptians searching for lost cats. In conclusion, by all means try caribou paunch salsa. The north has few delicacies to compare but be certain to tie everyone down or at least eat indoors and wear a hockey helmet. (Eating indoors won't always solve the problem. One Inuit family found themselves at Bloor and Yonge after an all night party. The property tax increase wiped them out and they are now living under a culvert near the Bankrupt Sky Dome having been forced to sell their igloo during a bad real estate downturn: Ed. note). Dr. Peregrine Inverbon, Ph.d., DD, LL.d, Ph.G Transcribed by his humble servant John Winters *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
John Winters wrote: > > To my knowledge no one has found any ancient Thule racks at > excavated Inuit campsites. On the other hand, Inuit racks are quite common around Thule. Steve -- Test Scoring & Reporting Services Sometimes, you never can University of Georgia always tell what you Athens, GA 30602-5593 least expect the most. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
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