Crawfish Etouffee...Pizza

 

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Last night the guinea pig and I were watching "The Best Thing I Ever Ate - Pizza" on Food Network. He wasn't impressed with anything the chefs talked about (he's not really a "foodie"). So I asked him what would impress him. "Crawfish Etouffee Pizza," says he. "Hmmm, okay, that's different."  We've had crawfish pizza before, nothing new there, but never an etouffee based pizza. So I pull out my trusty Crawfish Etouffee recipe, look over the ingredients and come to the conclusion that this could work. I figured I could make the etouffee for dinner and make a small 8-inch pizza to see how it tastes.

So, was it any good? Yes and no. It was okay but next time I'm going to do a couple things different. The etouffee however, was great. This is my father-in-law's recipe and it's the best I've ever had. 

First you start off by chopping up your veggies and sauteing them over medium heat in a stick of butter. 

I know it's a lot of butter but you do need ½ cup for the sauce. If you must, you can use olive oil, scaredy cat! 

Let the veggies turn a golden color, takes about 5 minutes.

Then add a heaping tablespoon of all-purpose flour. Let that cook for another 5 to 10 minutes. 

Add a cup of chicken stock (or water) and cover. Drop the heat down to low and simmer for 20 - 30 minutes.







While the etouffee simmers, make some rice.

Super easy...except I had a DOH! moment. Yeah, after the etouffee was done and I turned the heat off, I started working on the pizza and questioning the guinea pig and trying to figure out what it needed and didn't need and got caught up in a stoopid! episode of Cheaters and yelling at the crazy fools on the tv and an hour and a half later I realized my etouffee was still simmering! I didn't turn the heat off. NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Lucky for me it didn't burn. It just turned a deeper brownish color, but the flavor was still good, a little more intense than usual. I just pretended it was supposed to be that color.

So for the pizza, I took the easy way out and bought an 8-inch ready made crust. I used the sauce from the etouffee and spread it over the crust. Next I put on some shredded mozzarella. I found some smoked mozzarella at the store so I thought that would be really good on it too. Wrong - the smoked mozzarella was too strong and you could barely taste the etouffee. I only used a little bit but next time I'll just stick with the plain mozzarella. Then I put on the crawfish and veggies and sprinkled on the Tony's. Since crawfish season is just now starting up, I used frozen crawfish. It's okay but not nearly as good as crawfish that comes from the crawfish boil and that would've made a big difference on the pizza.

 

It's not my favorite pizza but I'd definitely make it again.

So I'm putting the food away and cleaning up the kitchen and the guinea pig comes in and says "Hey, do you think you could make Crawfish Etouffee Ravioli?" Hmmm...I think I'll try that one after the first crawfish boil.

CRAWFISH ETOUFFEE

1 lb  crawfish tails
1 stick butter
1 large white onion, chopped
¼ of a bell pepper, chopped
1 stalk of celery, chopped
1-2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tablespoon  all-purpose flour
1 cup water or chicken stock
salt & red pepper, to taste
Tony Chachere's Cajun Seasoning, to taste

Saute onion, bell pepper, celery and garlic in butter until golden.  Stir often.  Add flour, stirring continuously for 5-10 minutes or until well blended.  Add tails and mix thoroughly.  Season to taste.  Add 1 cup water or chicken stock and cover.  Simmer about 20-30 minutes until meat is tender.  Add or cook off water until gravy is consistency desired.  Serve over rice.