The Recipe Thread [tm--CajunCook]

Umm...I made this tonight, out of left-over crawfish and fresh (frozen?) Gulf shirmp:

SHRIMP AND CRAWFISH AU GRATIN {serves 4}:

4 T butter
3 T minced onion
1 T garlic
1/2 lb (1 cup) diced leftover crawfish tails (peeled with fat of course)
1 cup peeled shrimp (raw, yet seasoned)
1 cup White Sauce *
1 tsp chopped parsley
1 cup (divided) grated cheddar cheese
bread crumbs

Saute onions & garlic in butter until soft. Add shrimp and crawfish (and those seasonings for the shrimp, you know). Cook until shrimp are pink. Add white sauce* and parsley. Mix well. Cook 3-4 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in 1/2 cup of cheese. Pour into greased baking dish (I used a 2-qt, but a smaller one, like even a 1 qt, will work). Sprinkle with remaining cheese, then with bread crumbs. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.

variations

Use crabmeat instead of crawfish for shrimp-and-crab au gratin

Whatever seafood you want to use, it winds up being 2 cups...= 1 lb, for either shrimp, crab meat, or crawfish au gratin, or any combination of said seafood. I used shrimp and crawfish, and chopped up the crawfish so it behaved more like crab in the dish, and left the shrimp whole. But it can be played with...like, if I only had shrimp, I would have used 2 cups of them, and chopped one cup of them up just to get that "consistency" , and vice-versa if all I would have had was crawfish. Make sense?

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*White sauce recipe:

2 T butter
2 T flour
1 cup milk

Melt butter in saucepan. Add flour. Mix thoroughly. Cook over low heat until bubbly. Stir in milk. Bring to a boil. Cook 1-2 minutes. Makes one cup of white sauce.

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But anyway, this turned out REALLY good, and probably the most tedious part was peeling the crawfish...that, and figuring out "cups" and "lbs" of the seafood ingredients...I just went with the old stand-by of "a cup of peeled tails = 1/2 lb"...that worked. Plus you know I herbed-and-spiced it without saying...one hint I'll give...a cap-ful of Zatarains liquid boil on the shrimp, and a little white wine in there with the butter and onions, but heck I figure y'all all can cook...;)