MAR_APR_2014_FINAL_3-15-16

For the Love of Crawfish! by Katie Culbert + photos by Denny Culbert

I am a crawfish eating expert. It’s my favorite food. Absolute favorite. I love everything about crawfish. The way it tastes is of course important, but my love lies with the actual ritual of eating boiled crawfish. It’s a food meant to be eaten in large groups, dumped out onto one long table, everyone’s hands digging in. I like mine extra spicy. I never use sauce, and I don’t eat anything else with my crawfish beyond a boiled onion or two. I never suck the head, but rather dig out the good orange fat with my pinky. And it’s about the only time I really prefer drinking beer. I peel my crawfish super fast, and the only person I know who peels crawfish faster than me is my mother. She grew up in Opelousas and the only person who peels crawfish faster than her is her mother. I love standing and peeling and chatting until I almost get dizzy from spice and flavor. It’s my Zen or as an English chef friend of mine once put it during his weekly pilgrimage to Cajun Claws in Abbeville, “eating boiled crawfish is truly a religious experience.” But when it comes to boiling crawfish, I am definitely no expert. It’s a skill that only one or two people have within every social or family circle. My Uncle Jack has always been the boiler of my family. My cousins and I would run around that big scary pot, steam everywhere, sweat all over our faces. We had no clue what was going on, but we knew that Uncle Jack was in charge and what

he was doing was extremely important and special. In college at Tulane, my friend Jeff always did the boiling. Usually under the oak trees in Audobon Park, there was always a great mix of kids who grew up in south Louisiana juxtaposed with New York and New Jersey kids who had never seen anything like it. Jeff ’s boils taught me that eating crawfish with a bunch of people who know how to eat crawfish is just as fun as eating crawfish with people who have no clue at where to even begin. It creates an instant bond between strangers. Jeff also threw crazy things in his boil like edamame and chicken breasts, something I had never seen before.These days I can say without hesitation that my friend Harry Barton reigns supreme when it comes to throwing a proper crawfish boil. He has the whole process down pat from start to finish. He even had custom benches built on his back deck that serve as storage for all his boil essentials. I caught up with Harry recently in hopes of gaining some of his crawfish boiling wisdom. • Do you have a first memory of eating boiled crawfish? My mother peeling them for me in the kitchen of my folks’ house in Lafayette when I was very young. She couldn’t peel them fast enough for me. • Who taught you how to boil crawfish? I am self-taught. I read a few articles about timing and technique

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY MARCH | APRIL 2014