Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Crawfish Boils & Spitfire Nights


By: Amy Thomas


CRAWFISH BOILS & SPITFIRE NIGHTS
Although we have officially lived here for over a year now, this season I celebrated my first crawfish boil.  Crawfish (down here you don't say crayfish) eat like lobsters, aka bottom-feeders, and look like lobsters that were miniaturized with a ray gun.  They are a family staple here, I listen with envy to the stories of family Easters and Memorial Days centered around crawfish boils, because they connect you with the others ravenously hovered and dripping around your table.

My first boil was on the neutral ground on Esplanade at Royal for a friends birthday.  I learned my first 'boil' lesson fast, at a crawfish boil you will always wait.  It will never be ready when scheduled, and that is ok.  You are going to mingle, meet new invitees, and of course, enjoy ice cold libations. During all of this your olfactory glands are being overwhelmed, housing a fight club of incredible, mouth-watering smells.  This stingy, spicy, salt-water scent wafts into the air and creeps into your hair follicles to where you are becoming one with the boil before the red-armored mouth gold even exit the pot.

Traditionally, boils are made with crawfish boil juice which is a mix of vinegar and voracious spices, most people either use Zatarains or Louisiana brand.  Then a mix of whole garlic, lemons, red potatoes, and corn cob pieces, this one also had okra and pineapple in it (we had a chef).

It's time.  You know this because the table is cleared off and lined with newspaper.  The tension builds in the air, you begin to look at the table, strategizing, where am I going to stand...Your mouth begins to water as the pot is hauled over, slowly lifted, and dumped across the table, releasing fifty pounds of bright red delicious, nectariously beautiful, steamy goodness.  I am taught how to eat them, which takes two long seconds, and its on!!

I almost black out until its over.  The shells are hot as hell, I suck the head of each, vacuuming in spicy crawfish stock to the back of my throat, the excess dripping down the sides of my mouth and down my arms--the small bites of meat inside, perfect.  Its so much better than lobster because you have to put so much work into getting to each and every little bite of meat, and the reward is the pay-off.  To me, sucking the head is equally fulfilling to eating the meat, it's like a shot of chanterrelle buerre blanc followed with a bite of medium rare filet mignon with each and every crawfish.


There is a frantic urgency in the air, I spare half a moment to look up to see that everyone is sharing my intensity.  Pick one up, remove the head, suck hard, peel around on the first shell of the abdomen, grab the tale right where it starts, pinch, and pull, eat the meat, throw it down and pick another one up as fast as you can. Do it again.  A banjo is playing in the background.  Friends walking by on the street are called over to join, strangers stand next to each other, ravaging, now we are like brothers and sisters of this visceral moment.

When it's over its like waking up from a dream.  You are covered in juices, you finally feel the sting in every cut on your fingers that you couldn't feel during the ecstasy of eating.  Survey your pile of carcasses and feel proud.  The music starts, the horns, and drums, mixing with hillbilly banjos.  You feel fulfilled, alive, maybe a little drunk, and it feels like you are a part of a low country tribe of vandals, like a gypsy queen of alligators and crustaceans alike.