An Un-Cajun Is On The Loose

A year ago, Bev and I made a trip to NOLA and brought back several items so we could make the local cuisine at home, but each time I’d mention it, she’d rather have something else.  When son Rhett, who I know likes Cajun, stopped off for a couple of days on his way from Ft. Knox to his new assignment at Ft. Bragg, I decided it was now or maybe never.

I believed I had some crawfish tails, gator bites and boudin which I’d planned to turn into crawfish pie, gator cakes, and boudin balls.  I’d saved a recipe for the crawfish pie from Katherine over at Smoky Mountain Kitchen, a recipe for deep-fried  boudin balls from About.com, and planned to use my crab cake recipe with different spices for the gator cakes.

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “the best laid plans…”, when I went to the freezer I found the tails and boudin, but not the gator bites, finding some gator sausage instead – no problem as it would be grilled sausage rather than gator cakes and my job just got easier. 

So I turned to boudin and the recipe says remove the casing and crumble, then form into balls. 

I removed the casing from one of three and it crumbled like dry rice and would not form a ball, patty, or anything else. 

I considered adding and egg or other binder, but decided to just grill the other two along with the sausage – my job got easier yet.

We ate them while the pie baked and I’d made up a couple of sauces using a 50/50 mix of Big Bob Gibson’s Mustard Sauce and mayo and doing the same thing with some homemade mustard sauce I had - they weren't half bad.  This was our first time for boudin and Rhett and I both really liked it – preferring it to the gator sausage.  This was the mild and it was still pretty spicy - I can only imagine the spicier version was a flamer.

Earlier. I’d made the pie filling and just had to heat it up, fill the crust, and bake.  I tried to follow Katherine’s recipe to the letter, but I ended up with more of an etouffee in a pie crust and the more I baked it, the soupier it became. Check Katherine's site for what it's supposed to look like.

Several possibilities for this – perhaps I didn’t cook enough of the water from the veggies, or I didn’t reduce the sauce by half after adding the shrimp stock and cream, or my tails were not packed it fat and even though I drained them, they still added water. 

Like many recipes, even though you follow it, there’s a feel or look to the dish and you know when it’s right – just as I will next time.

Bev wasn’t interested in any of the NOLA dishes but Rhett and I both thought the crawfish pie was delicious and perhaps I’ll cook up some rice to put under the leftovers.  I'll make it again and maybe arrange for a lesson from Katherine in the meantime.

As for the remaining very crumbly boudin, you guessed it – scrambled eggs.  I just sautéed it in a little oil, added 4 eggs beaten with a little cream and hot sauce, scrambled moist and served with the leftover gator sausage which I’d split lengthwise and heated cut-side down in a skillet and added to a croissant with some of the mustard sauce.

Now this was my kind of Cajun food and Rhett's comment was "yep, I'm definitely a fan of boudin."

All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

One year ago:  New Orleans Trip – Almost Over

Two years ago: A Little Fun In The Sun

Larry