The Short But Delicious Life and Death of Crawfish Claude

I love to cook.

Even more than that, I love to eat.

I don't do a lot of serious cooking in the summertime. It's way too hot out to run the oven, so Chuckles takes over the cooking duties with his trusty grill during the sweltering months. During the winter, I love to experiment.

I come from a long line of great cooks.

Ok, I don't really know how long the line is, but my mum had the excellent fortune to learn from my two culinarily gifted grandmothers, and I have reaped the benefits.

My maternal grandmother, Jessie, has lived out most of her years living in Northern Saskatchewan.



My mum's tiny hometown is actually on that map, I'll let you guess which one it is.

From her 80th birthday party last year. In case it's not obvious, my Grandma's the one reading the card:


Here's a fun fact: that side of my family is Métis (may-tee), which is a French word that means mixed aboriginal and European descent. My Mum is one of 13 children. Eight girls, five boys. My grandma had THIRTEEN kids. I can't even imagine. My youngest uncle is a year younger than my oldest brother. How's that for crazy? My grandma is one tough cookie. You've got to be, when you've got that many kids. She's awesome.

My grandma is a great cook. She owned her own restaurant up there for a time, and when she wasn't an owner, would always somehow participate in the food business any way she could. Northern Saskatchewan is kind of isolated, with a whole lot of forest, hence there are a lot of forest fires. She would often cook for the firefighters down at the fire cache.

My mum often tells me stories from her childhood. Time ran a little slower there in terms of technological advancements and the like, and her stories often sounded like she was living a 'Little House on the Prairie' life even though she was born in the early 1950's. My grandpa John was a hunter, a trapper, and a fisherman. My family was quite poor (with 13 kids to feed and clothe, they would be, wouldn't they?). During the summertime, camping wasn't camping, it was the way they lived. My grandma knew how to clean fish, tan hides and smoke various wild meats. My mum said she ate so much fish as a kid, she couldn't eat it again till she was much, much older.

I think my favourite thing to eat that my grandma (not to mention all my aunts) made was fresh bannock. Every time my mum and I made the 8 hour trip from Edmonton to her hometown, I always knew there'd be some of it on the counter waiting to be slathered in butter and snacked on.



My dad was from Southern Saskatchewan. His hometown is not on the above map, but it's a small farming community somewhere near Yorkton.

That side of my family is Ukrainian. The Canadian prairies are full of Ukrainians. Edmonton, the city I'm from, is so full of them that people there call it Edmonchuk for fun. My maiden name is long and ethnic, a very common Ukrainian name ending in, you guessed it, 'chuk'. I really liked it, but ever since I've been married, I'm relieved when someone asks me my name and I only have to spell the 'Kyna' part out.

My mum married my dad when she was 16 and he was 25. I think my parents were very good-looking in this picture (which was fortunate since they were married in the 60's).



They were married for 17 years. It's funny, my parents were from two completely different backgrounds and opposite ends of the province. But they each were immersed in the culture of the other. My mum, being married to my dad so young, learned the ways of Ukrainian farm life and how to cook amazing Ukrainian food. My dad was the Director for the Department of Native Education in Alberta for 30-some years. Not an ounce of aboriginal blood in the man, but the Native people he worked with and worked for treated him as one of their own.

My Ukrainian grandmother Mary, whom we called 'Baba', was a very tiny woman. I believe she was 4'11".

Haha, look at the chops on my dad! A person can really change in just a few years, can't they?



I wasn't as close to her as I was to my other grandma, because my parents separated when I was 3. Also, she and my paternal grandfather Paul ('Gido' in Ukrainian) died when I was quite young.

Even though I only remember seeing her a few times, I remember that she was an excellent, excellent cook. Perogies (pyrohy), cabbage rolls, amazing breads. She had a temper on her though. I remember one time when I was there, Baba got irritated with my cousin in the kitchen and whacked him on the hand with a wooden spoon. I remember Gido getting up at 4am and banging around in the kitchen, cleaning dishes or something, when everyone else was still trying to sleep. That was leftover from farm life I guess. He would ask me if I wanted some candy from the store when he went, and I'd always say no because I didn't like candy all that much. I think he thought I was a little weirdo because of that.

The Ukrainian side of my family is filled with 'big' personalities. They talk loud, they laugh loud, and they argue when they play card games. Great storytellers. When I was younger, I was a little frightened by it all. I was very shy. Then I sort of grew into my own big, loud, Ukrainian personality, and I'm very glad for both halves of chromosomes that I inherited.

Especially the cooking part. Like a good Ukrainian girl, I know how to make perogies from scratch. It takes me 4 or 5 hours, but it's worth it.




I'll attempt pretty much anything. Most of the time, everything ends up delicious, and the odd time something doesn't work, I don't sweat it too much. Chuck is a great guinea pig. He'll eat pretty much anything except cottage cheese and anything savory where fruit is an ingredient where he thinks it shouldn't be. Can't sneak a raisin past Chuckles.

My mum sent me a whole load of recipes as a housewarming present when we decided to get married. I also think the internet is a treasure trove of recipes as long as you have the common sense to discern which ones are crap and which ones aren't. So maybe I'm not so much a good cook as I am a person with good common sense.

I think living down here in the South has broadened my culinary horizons even more than if I had stayed in Canada. I would have never experienced collard greens, homemade corn bread, black eyed pea and ham soup, and fresh Southern biscuits with white sausage gravy. I still can't stomach grits though, they look like snot.

The other day I got a wild hair up my ass and decided to make Crawfish Étouffée, which is a dish popular in Louisiana.

I never in a million years thought I'd be popping the heads of crawfish and stewing them to make a seafood stock.

Never.

I named this little guy Crawfish Claude and played with him a little bit.









Then I ripped his head off and threw it in the pot with his other friends.




Added some veggies and spices.



And a delicious crawfish stock was born.

The dish itself was time intensive, but I had laid out all my ingredients ahead of time so I would have everything ready to go into the pot.




Ideally I would be using a different type of heavy-bottomed pot, perhaps enameled cast iron, but I'm poor so I have to work with what I got.

I first made a white roux, added in the my mirepoix of veggies and tomatoes, added crawfish tails and andouille sausage, and then in went my stock.










Serve it over rice, and voila.



I realize that this dish isn't everyone's cup of tea. My brother-in-law Steve hates shrimp and the like, he calls them 'sea roaches'. Luckily I married the more adventurous, 'foodie' brother.

Chuck is sad because he's full but still has the urge to eat more because it's so good.


I got the recipe off of this guy. I think he could have made it a little more spicy, and next time I would add a lot more heat to the dish. But otherwise it was awesome. I love YouTube. I learn by watching, and found a video on how to peel crawfish that will be valuable to me for the rest of my cooking life.

Crawfish Claude really took one for the team.