Crawfish Melinda's
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!
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Ingredients
- 10 button mushrooms sliced
- 1 Box fettuccine pasta (you can substitute bowtie)
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 1 Yellow Onion diced
- 1 red bell pepper diced
- 6 Scallions chopped
- 1 Stick unsalted butter
- 2 tspn Creole seasoning
- 1 pinch dried thyme
- 1 pinch dried oregano
- 1 tsp Kosher Salt
- 2 tsp black pepper
- ½ cup chicken stock
- 1 pound crawfish tails with fat (fresh or frozen)
- 1 cup Gruyere or Parmesan Reggiano Freshly grated
- 1 pint heavy cream
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- ¼ cup flat leaf Italian parsley chopped
- 2 tsps Melinda's XXXX Reserve Pepper Sauce
Instructions
- Boil pasta al dente (10-12 minutes), drain and place back in stock pot with one tbsp. of olive oil. Toss pasta with olive oil to keep from sticking. The pasta will cook some more when it is incorporated with the cream sauce.
- While pasta 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).
- 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.
