Much as we would love to visit all 50 states during our 4 year stay in the US, we know that it might be tough going. So we were delighted to receive an invitation from some friends to attend a 'Backyard Crawfish Boil' which would permit us to sample the culinary delights of Louisiana without having to travel there. It seems that crawfish is a big deal in Louisiana. According to www.crawfish.org, it produces over 90% of the nation's domestic crop, and the crawfish industry is worth approximately $120m per year to the state. In recent years, a significant trade has developed in distributing live crawfish throughout the US (with 'shipping and seasoning included').
The idea behind a Crawfish Boil is simple:
1. Take receipt of several hundred live crawfish, shipped via Fedex.
2. Don thick rubber gloves.
3. Put a couple of metal vats of water on to boil.
4. Place the luckless crawfish into the boiling water.
5. Drink a Louisiana beer.
6. Remove the cooked crawfish from the water and place in piles on a trestle table.
7. Grab a crawfish, pull off its head, remove its tail and shell.
8. Admire the miniscule amount of meat that remains.
9. Eat with boiled potatoes and corn-on-the-cob.
10. Repeat.
It really was great fun (apart from the bit where the live crawfish met their fate) and the crawfish-spuds-corn combo was absolutely delicious. The whole exercise is fairly labour-intensive - a good five minute's work nets a tiny amount of crawfish - but the advantage of this is that it gives you more time to chat and drink beer. The only trouble is that we enjoyed ourselves so much at today's taster that we now feel compelled to visit the Pelican State in person after all...
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