Mud Bug Bisque

This weekend Lauren and I picked up a bag of crawfish for a late afternoon lunch. We walked up to Captain Sal's Seafood to get them because they usually do a pretty good job; Lauren got a great batch of big, spicy, juicey ones there the weekend before. This was not the case with this batch. They were over salted, dry, and bland. We decided not to continue eating them. Bummer right? This story gets better...

We decided we would peel all the crawfish. Which it's hard to sit with a bag of crawfish and peel them with out eating them all but there was enough beer on hand that it wasn't that bad. We got about two big hand-fulls of tail meat. I put the tails in the fridge while I began prepping the other ingredients for a bisque.

 I defrosted some amazing white corn my mom had brought on her last visit. She packed it off the cob and it's sweet and creamy. I chopped up four red potatoes, four cloves of garlic and an onion. I threw the corn and potato in a pot on low and covered them.

 I browned the onion & garlic and added them to the potatoes and corn.

 Then with half a stick of butter and three tablespoons of flour I made a roux. I expanded it by whisking in a cup of 1% milk until I had a thick white gravy which I added to the vegetable mixture. I added 4 ounces of clam juice and 6 ounces of beer to thin it out a bit. I brought that mixture to boil stirring occasionally to keep it from scorching on the bottom.

 At a light boil I reduced the heat added the crawfish tails, 1/2 cup half & half, a dash of worchestire sauce, a dash of hot sauce, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and salt to taste.  I let it simmer on low until the potatoes were al dente. While it was simmering I grilled some rye toast that I drizzled with olive oil and cracked with salt and pepper. I also trimmed a bit of parsley from the garden.

So that's the story of how we turned a bad bag of bugs into a banging bisque. Bon appetite!