One of the most delicious dishes to come out of New Orleans is Crawfish Fettuccine, a dish popularized at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival as "Crawfish Monica." You will find dozens of recipes on the internet for this dish calling for the use of processed cheese -- yuck -- don't do that to the people you love! Crawfish Melinda's uses heavy cream, butter and real cheese. We call it Crawfish Melinda's because we wouldn't want it to be confused with all those gross recipes that use Velveeta. Melinda's always strives to do it right, no short cuts. Just like our famous habanero pepper sauce recipe -- always fresh! Serve with hot crusty French Bread and a green salad with a vinaigrette dressing. Everyone will adore you!
Crawfish Pasta
Chef Fig
Rated 4.0 stars by 1 users
Category
Main Dish
Cuisine
Cajun
One of the most delicious dishes to come out of New Orleans is Crawfish Pasta, a dish popularized at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival as "Crawfish Monica." You will find dozens of recipes on the internet for this dish calling for the use of processed cheese -- yuck -- don't do that to the people you love! Crawfish Melinda's uses heavy cream, butter and real cheese. We call it Crawfish Melinda's because we wouldn't want it to be confused with all those gross recipes that use Velveeta. Melinda's always strives to do it right, no short cuts. Just like our famous habanero pepper sauce recipe -- always fresh! Serve with hot crusty French Bread and a green salad with a vinaigrette dressing. Everyone will adore you!
Prepare a large pot with water to boil pasta. Heavily salt your pasta water.
While water is boiling, melt half a stick of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil in a large dutch oven over medium high heat.
Sauté onions for a few minutes and then add red pepper and mushrooms, after a few more minutes add the green onions and the garlic, stir all together and add the chicken stock.
Stir in the Creole seasoning, thyme, oregano, salt and black pepper. Allow chicken stock to boil and reduce, about 2 more minutes.
Add the crawfish tails and any liquid from their package and stir them into the mixture, allowing the fat and flavor from tail to incorporate with all the ingredients. Stir for another 2 minutes.
Remove crawfish tails from mixture as best as you can and reserve. It's OK if all some of the other ingredients stick to the crawfish tails. You just want to make sure that the tails do not over cook and become tough or rubbery.
Add the heavy cream, bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Reduce heavy cream until it is thick enough to coat your spoon, about 7 to 10 minutes (Be patient, this is the key step to success with this dish).
While the cream is reducing and thickening, It’s a good time to boil your pasta. Boil pasta al dente (10-12 minutes).
Incorporate the grated cheese and stir. Then add back in the crawfish tails and any bits that stuck to them back into the sauce.
Fold in the pasta and cook on low for 2 to 3 minutes. Sprinkle on the parsley and serve with hot French bread and a salad.
