Today, especially when we “do Louisiana” in Texas, everything seems to be about the crawfish boil. But when I was growing up in New Orleans, the shrimp boil was king, except when people put on a crab boil. I never went to a single crawfish boil. Among other things, that was before the bizarre “Cajunization” of the New Orleans food culture in the 1980s, mostly by national food writers who didn’t know a Cajun from a Creole. When I was a kid, you had to leave town to even find a Cajun – something we did each summer when we loaded up the car and headed south along winding Bayou Lafourche to a Gulf barrier island called Grand Isle. My father let his beard grow out, something insurance agents weren’t allowed to do in those days. And on fishing trips that always started before dawn, my mother sat silently beneath her wide-brimmed straw hat in the back of the boat and caught more speckled trout than any of the rest of us. Afternoons were devoted to swimming, crabbing in the surf with chicken necks tied on string and dragging a long net called a seine through the shallows for shrimp. When we did the latter especially well, we did this for dinner.
Cold water
6 lemons
1 large onion, quartered
2 stalks celery, roughly chopped with leaves
1-2 bags of “crab boil” seasoning per pot
2 tablespoons Creole seasoning
2 tablespoons lemon pepper
1-2 teaspoons hot pepper sauce
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 small red-skinned potatoes per person
½ pound smoked sausage per person
1 ear corn per person, cut into 2 inch pieces
½ pound medium-large raw Gulf shrimp per person
Cocktail sauce:
½ cup ketchup
¼ cup prepared remoulade sauce
1-2 tablespoons prepared horseradish
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon Creole seasoning
1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
Fill a large pot ⅔ full with cold water. Squeeze the lemons into the water and toss in the rinds. Add the onion, celery, crab boil, Creole seasoning, lemon pepper and hot sauce; bring to a rolling boil. Add the vinegar to make the shrimp easier to peel. Reduce heat to medium, add potatoes and sausage and cook for about 20 minutes. Add the corn. When potatoes have softened to fork tender, add in shrimp and cook about 2 minutes, until shrimp are pink. Turn off heat and let the shrimp steep in the hot liquid 4 minutes more. Drain everything into a colander and run under cold water to prevent overcooking. Serve warm, or put shrimp in refrigerator for about 2 hours to chill. To prepare the Cocktail Sauce, stir all ingredients together in a bowl. Saltine crackers are mandatory.
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