Alligator and Crawfish Etouffee Po-Boys - Cajun

Ingredients:

Alligator and Crawfish Etouffee Po-Boys

Today, I'll show you how to do some cooking cajun-style. I've lived in south Louisiana all my life, and like all Louisianians, have acquired a taste for the tons of weird but delicious foods that my culture embraces. Foods like these include Nutria Rat, which is surprisingly tasty.

Today, however, I am going to show you how to make an etouffee po-boy. Traditionally, etouffee is served over rice, and is crawfish rather than crawfish and alligator, but we're going to mix things up a little. This etouffee is served on bread with swiss cheese and contains both alligator and crawfish.

This recipe won't make the etouffee very spicy at all, but then again you can't trust a Louisianian telling you that something isn't spicy.

First, we'll start off with an ingredient list. This is enough to make 6 sandwiches which will be around 4" x 6":
2 pounds chopped alligator tail meat (I pay $7.50/lb, so if you can find it it should be around there)
1/2 cup water
Pinch of flour
2 cups chopped bell pepper, I used green, orange, and yellow
1 cup yellow onion
1 cup green onion
2 tablespoons parsley
1/2 cup lemon juice
Garlic to taste, minced
Cajun seasoning such as Tony Chachere's (pronounced Satch-Er-Ay) or Savoire's (pronounced Sav-Wa). Tony's, as we call it down here, is the more popular of the two, and in my opinion is also the better of the two.
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1/2 Tsp of hot sauce such as Tabasco
1/2 pound crawfish tail meat
6 slices Swiss cheese
1/2 cup (1/2 stick) butter
a bit of Chardonnay
2 loaves of Italian bread (po-boys are traditionally french bread)

Herb Butter
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 teaspoon garlic salt
2 teaspoons parsley
1 tsp lemon juice
Garlic (minced) to taste

Let's get to cookin'

The pile of white meat in the middle is 2 lbs of Louisiana Alligator meat. I was going to get fresh crawfish tails instead of packaged, but hurricane Rita really put a hitch in my area's normally abundant crawfish farming.

I obtained the meat from a place near me called Hebert's Specialty Meats, which happens to be where the world-famous Turducken was invented. The Turducken is a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken. The alligator meat ran me $15 for 2 lbs.

I tried to get my meat from a local alligator farm, as it would have probably been cheaper, but they wouldn't answer the phone.

Step 1:

Here's a close-up of the alligator meat. If you get meat which has a greyish or whitish membrane on it, make sure to remove all of this. Mine seemed to have been pre-removed. Alligator has a really weird texture when raw, it almost feels like what you'd imagine human meat to feel like.

Step 2:

Melt the ingredients of the Herb Butter in a skillet, and sautee the alligator meat in this for approximately 2 minutes on each side. You want the meat to be a uniform white color throughout.

Step 3:

This is what the meat looked like after it was cooked. The reason it is brown and not white is because the garlic in with the butter will brown and also turned the butter brown along with it. My first piece came out perfectly white.

Step 4:

Combine butter, onion, bell pepper, and garlic. You may also want to add some salt and pepper. Sauté until tender, then add cajun spices, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, parsley, and garlic. Add water and flour then bring to a simmer.

Step 5:

Add crawfish, green onion and a little chardonnay. I used 1/2-3/4c of chardonnay, and it was a little much but still tasted great. You can also throw some 'gator in there at this point (I did), but that's up to you. Simmer until the crawfish takes on the color of the etouffee somewhat. Blend in food processor until the etoufee has a nice creamy consistancy.

Step 6:

Take some of your cooked gator and lay it out in the bottom of a skillet. Spoon some of your etouffee over this, then lay a piece of swiss cheese on top. Heat this until the swiss cheese melts.

Step 7:

While waiting for the cheese to melt, toast some of your bread in a seperate pan if you desire.

Step 8:

When the cheese is melted, place the bottom half of your bread on top of the etouffee on the skillet and flip it and the etoufee over at the same time.

Step 9:

Most people will probably be grossed out by this, but most anyone who has tried true cajun cooking will tell you that you have no clue what you're missing out on.

Alligator is probably one of my favorite meats, rivaling a nice quality Black Angus steak. It's up there with main lobster for me. It's not fishy tasting at all, which is obviously because alligator is a reptile not seafood The texture when properly prepared is slightly chewy but very tender at the same time. Many people say that alligator is a very tough meat, and if someone says this they truly haven't had properly prepared alligator.

Enjoy your Alligator and Crawfish Etouffee Po-Boys.