No. 1008

Crawfish a la Bordelaise

Ecrevisses a la Bordelaise

Choose live crawfish; set them inside a net, wash them well, and plunge them rapidly into boiling water, leaving them in only sufficiently long to kill, then drain and pick off the small legs. Fry a mirepoix of roots and minced onions in oil, moisten with white wine, season, and add aromatic herbs, a bunch of parsley and a few spoonfuls of brandy; let the whole boil for several minutes, then throw in the crawfish and cook them from ten to fourteen minutes according to their size, while tossing steadily. Take them off the fire, strain the broth through a sieve, leaving the crawfish in the saucepan. Cut in small three-sixteenth of an inch squares or in Julienne, some red part of carrots, and tender celery roots, parboil both in salted water, and then drain, fry without coloring in some butter, onions, cut in three-sixteenths of an inch squares, add to it the roots, and fry together for a few minutes, then moisten with two or three spoonfuls of broth and the crawfish stock; let the liquid fall twice to a glaze so that the vegetables are well cooked, and moisten again with the stock of the crawfish reduced to a half-glaze. Cook together for five or six minutes, then thicken with small pieces of butter kneaded with flour, adding also two or three spoonfuls of Madeira wine and a dash of cayenne pepper; remove the sauce to the side of the fire in order to add butter to it. Dress the crawfish on a deep dish with a little of their own broth, and serve the sauce in a separate sauce-boat.

← No. 1007 Crawfish a la Bateliere Crawfish No. 1009 Crawfish au Court Bouillion and Mariniere →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a brigade, a stove with hot and cool zones, and European écrevisses bought alive that morning. The method translates cleanly to one pan and one small saucepan if you read the reductions carefully.

The hinge: two reductions to glaze"Let the liquid fall twice to a glaze" means cook the vegetables in the moistening liquid until it has all but evaporated and coats the pan, add more, and do it again. This is what concentrates the sauce; if you keep it loose and merely simmer, you get thin crawfish broth thickened with flour.
Cooking timeTen to fourteen minutes is longer than crawfish of the size commonly sold today need; those are generally done in about five to seven minutes in simmering liquid, past which the tail meat turns cottony. Judge by the tails curling tight and the shells turning uniformly red.
Live crawfish and the veinCrawfish must be alive going into the pot; discard any that are limp or unresponsive. Some cooks remove the dark intestinal thread before cooking by pinching and twisting the centre tail fin. Ranhofer only mentions picking off the small legs, but the vein is worth removing.
Mirepoix "of roots"Root vegetables cut roughly, since this batch is strained out. The finely cut vegetables that go into the sauce come later and are a separate operation.
Three-sixteenths of an inchAbout 5 mm -- a fairly substantial brunoise, not a fine dice. The julienne offered as an alternative would be strips of roughly the same thickness.
Half-glazeThe crawfish stock "reduced to a half-glaze" is boiled down until it is syrupy and lightly coats a spoon. It should not be reduced to the point of stickiness.
Thickening and finishing"Butter kneaded with flour" is beurre manié — equal weights, worked to a paste, whisked in off the boil in small pinches. The final butter goes in with the pan off direct heat and the sauce below a simmer, or it will break.
Quantity and servingNo yield is given. Reckon 10 to 12 crawfish per person as a first course, or about 2 lb of whole crawfish for two. They are eaten with the fingers from the deep dish, with the sauce spooned over or used for dipping — set out finger bowls and a bowl for shells.
Frozen crawfishCooked frozen tails will not work here: the point of the dish is the flavour the whole crawfish give up to the cooking liquid, which becomes the sauce. Without live crawfish, use a good shellfish stock and treat the result as a different dish.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the crawfish chapter reflects a kitchen still working in French idiom for an American clientele. À la bordelaise is one of the more slippery terms in classical cookery: applied to steak it means the red wine and marrow sauce, but applied to crawfish it means the Bordeaux shellfish preparation — white wine, mirepoix, brandy, cayenne. The dish is close kin to the sauce Nantua family, and the crawfish butter and coulis it generates were staples of the period's fish cookery. The native European species Ranhofer knew has since been largely displaced across Europe by introduced American crawfish — the red swamp crawfish, which is what most cooks will now be buying, and the signal crayfish, whose role in spreading crayfish plague is at least as responsible.