CookEat Recipe
Bisque of Crawfish
A finely strained crawfish bisque with fresh tomato, rice, herbs, cream and lemon, finished with the cooked tail meat reserved from eighteen of the same thirty animals.
Method
Steps
Step 1
Have two quarts of finished hot unsalted veal broth ready, made with veal bones and its aromatics without optional beef or poultry trimmings. Start with thirty small food-purpose red swamp crawfish (Procambarus clarkii), counted alive before preparation. Have a trained competent professional use a procedure and equipment appropriate to these crayfish to stun them effectively and immediately kill them while they remain raw. Confirm death before any tail removal or pounding; immobilisation alone is insufficient. Do not dismember or pound live animals. After confirmed death and before removing any tails or cleaning, rinse all thirty thoroughly in cold potable water. Have the raw animals cleaned of gills, stomach, intestinal tract and hepatopancreas, retaining the edible flesh and cleaned culinary shells.
Step 2
From eighteen of those same prepared raw animals remove their tail portions. Keep the cleaned head-and-body remainders from those eighteen together with the twelve whose tail material has not been reserved, refrigerated at 4°C or colder until pounding. Keep all raw material and its tools separate from the cooked tail meat. If professional preparation has opened parts, keep the portions associated with their original animals; do not add extra animals or put the eighteen reserved tails into the mortar base.
Step 3
Plunge the eighteen reserved tail portions into boiling water with a little vinegar and a little salt. Boil for about ten minutes, continuing as needed until a clean thermometer shows at least 74°C throughout the tail meat. Drain, remove the shells and retain all the actual meat from those eighteen tails. Discard their removed shells and poaching liquid.
Step 4
Put the cooked peeled tail meat promptly into a shallow clean protected container, loosely covered until cold. Refrigerate at 4°C or colder within two hours and keep it separate from all raw crawfish material. Use it for this bisque during the same preparation session; do not leave it on a plate at room temperature throughout the base cooking.
Step 5
Pound the cleaned raw head, body and shell material from all thirty original animals, including the unreserved tail material from the twelve, to a fine pulp in a heavy food-safe mortar, working in manageable batches. Keep the eighteen cooked tail portions out of this mixture. Prevent splashes and clean raw-contact equipment and surfaces before handling cooked food.
Step 6
Heat one ounce of the butter in a large heavy nonreactive stainless-steel saucepan on the hob. Add the pounded crawfish material, the finely sliced carrot and finely sliced onion. Cook briskly for about ten minutes, stirring frequently so the mixture cooks evenly without scorching.
Step 7
Add one pint of freshly crushed tomatoes, the two quarts of hot finished broth, a quarter pint white wine, two branches parsley, one branch chervil, one bay leaf, one clove and three ounces raw rice. Season with one good teaspoon salt and two saltspoons cayenne. Bring to a gentle boil and cook for about one hour, stirring occasionally across the bottom; continue as needed until the rice is fully tender and the stirred mixture reaches at least 74°C throughout.
Step 8
Pass the whole bisque first through a sieve into a clean basin, then through a fine conical Chinese strainer into a clean saucepan. Leave the retained hard shell fragments and coarse solids behind; do not force hard shards through. Do not serve the bisque if hard gritty fragments remain.
Step 9
Bring the strained bisque back to a boil. Add one gill liquid cream, the remaining half ounce butter, the juice of the quarter lemon without its seeds, and all the refrigerated cooked meat from the eighteen reserved tails. Stir continuously with a wooden spoon until the bisque comes to the boil again and reaches at least 74°C throughout, including the tail meat.
Step 10
Pour the finished bisque into a soup tureen and serve promptly. For an individual helping, ladle some bisque and tail meat from the finished tureen into a soup bowl.
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