| Level: | Easy |
| Total: | 35 min |
| Prep: | 15 min |
| Cook: | 20 min |
| Yield: | 4 to 6 servings |
Ingredients
- 1 pound crawfish tail meat, peeled, cleaned and deveined
- 1/2 stick butter
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 3/4 cup chopped and drained ripe tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
- 3/4 cup Monterey Jack Cheese
- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
- 1 loaf French bread
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Rinse the crawfish. In a large skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook for a few minutes. Add the tomatoes, Cajun seasoning and crawfish. Saute for 1 minute. Remove from the heat.
- In a bowl, mix together the cheeses, mayonnaise and parsley. Add the tomato and crawfish mixture to the mayo mixture.
- Cut the loaf of bread in half and then cut the bread lengthwise. Spoon the mixture on the bread and bake for 10 to 15 minutes. Then broil for an additional 3 to 5 minutes. Watch closely, as not to burn. Cut the bread into individual portions.
Nutrition Facts
| Serving Size | 1 of 6 servings |
| Calories | 528 |
| Total Fat | 34 g |
| Saturated Fat | 13 g |
| Carbohydrates | 28 g |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Sugar | 3 g |
| Protein | 28 g |
| Cholesterol | 94 mg |
| Sodium | 659 mg |
Reviews
One of the most popular dishes at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in recent years is crawfish bread. If you called it the Louisiana answer to pizza, you wouldn’t be far wrong. Basically, the idea is to make a good, thick crawfish-base sauce with lots of crawfish tails, hold it together with a light roux and cheese, and bake it onto a half-loaf of French bread. I think this comes out best if you use half-baked loaves of bread–the brown-and-serve kind are perfect, but even a lightly-baked loaf helps.
1 stick butter
1/3 cup flour
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped bell pepper
1/4 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 cup crawfish or shrimp stock or water
Pinch dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 Tblsp chopped garlic
1 1/2 cups crawfish tails, with fat if possible
1/2 cup tomatoes, diced
3 sprigs chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/3 cup sliced green onions
1/2 tsp. salt-free Creole seasoning
1/4 tsp. salt
8 oz. shredded Cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese
2 Tbs. grated Parmesan cheese
1 loaf po-boy bread
OR 3 THREE loaves brown-n-serve French bread
[so, for one Brown-n-serve Loaf, use 1/3 this recipe?]
In a large heavy skillet, melt the butter and heat it to a bubble.
Add flour gradually and stir constantly over medium-high heat to make a light brown roux, about five minutes.
Lower heat and add onions, bell pepper, and celery.
Sauté until limp, but not browned–about three minutes. Keep stirring to avoid burning the roux.
Add wine; bring to a boil.
After a minute, add stock, thyme, bay leaf, and garlic, then return to a boil.
Simmer about five minutes more, or until thickened.
Add crawfish tails, tomatoes, parsley, green onions, Creole seasoning, and salt.
Simmer for about eight to ten minutes, until sauce can be picked up with a fork.
Adjust S&P.
Sprinkle a thin, complete layer of cheese over bread.
Put under hot broiler ‘til cheese melts.
Take bread out and spoon the crawfish sauce down the center of the bread, and top with a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese.
Return to the oven until the sauce begins to bubble. Slice into appropriate serving portions and serve