The crawfish bisque recipe that charmed a sledgehammer-wielding drag queen

I am often too busy to deal with the maintenance required by my century-old New Orleans home. But on one particular Saturday, my long-time contractor assigned me the job of knocking out 10 feet of 100-year-old cast-iron drainage pipe, which had gone solidly blocked decades earlier and had now been bypassed by a new drain.

The contractor handed me a large sledgehammer and said: “It’s either you, or a plumber and his assistant at a total of $125 an hour. I’d say we’re looking at four hours minimum here, rolling on weekend overtime.”

I took the hammer.

I found that I was unable to even make a dent in the pipe. My shoulders were aching and the sound of my blows upon the pipe were becoming progressively quieter.

At some point, I heard someone knocking downstairs. As soon as I let go the handle to answer the door, I knew I would not be able to pick it up again. My shoulders, arms and upper body were already twitching with pain.

“Whatever are you doing, child?” inquired a lavishly arranged countenance set some six feet four inches off the ground. “Have I arrived at an indiscreet moment? I do hope so.”

The demure Ms Porter Summerville entered my home with a strut. Summerville, ever the star, was clad in designer sweats, tank top and shorts, and a spotless set of $200 running shoes on her dainty size-11 feet.

“I’m hitting a pipe with a sledgehammer,” I said, gesturing upstairs.

“How terribly exciting for you. Shall we go see?” Porter swept up to the second floor to inspect the site. She stopped close by to look intently. “Where exactly have you been hitting this pipe?” she said, a small upturn at the corners of her mouth.

“I know. It’s not working. I haven’t made a mark on it, and the thing has got to go. I’ll probably have to hire those damned plumbers.”

“Oh, sweet boy, let’s not be hasty. Is this the device?” she said, lifting the 20-pounder as easily as if it were a carpenter’s hand tool. “Now I’ll be glad to give you a bit of assistance, but you mustn’t let on to anyone. It would ruin the image that I work so hard to maintain. Just stand back and let a girl do what she can.”

Porter tapped the pipe lightly at intervals of a foot from the floor joint to the ceiling, listening after each contact to the pitch of the noise. She came to a conclusion, stepped back a foot, took a deep breath. I could see the veins in the muscles of her biceps begin to swell.

Then suddenly she drew back the sledge and loosed a swinging blow that ended with a deep crack, a rumble, and the collapse of the entire pipe above.

“Wonderful. Wonderful!” I yelled. “Porter, I am in your debt. How can I ever thank you?”

“Dinner would be nice. I’m tired of eating alone, and I’m just not ready for the restaurant scene yet.”

“Fine, I love to cook, and haven’t had an opportunity to really fire up the stove in weeks. Dinner, tomorrow night, seven?”

“I’ll dress.”

I decided I would make crawfish bisque, a dish any hungry person in south Louisiana is trained to make as soon as he or she can stand upright over flames. Crawfish, around my parents’ home, were the plentiful free food that appeared in all the bayous and ponds every spring. We caught them for the fun of it.

My Texas-sized guest arrived in a provocative scarlet two-piece ensemble topped with some rather modernist accessories, which she had arranged over a small lacy apron.

(Did I fail to mention that Porter is a drag queen?)

I handed her a knife. “You can help me chop ingredients while I talk.” The two of us began reducing vegetables into small sauté-able cubes as I gave my spiel. “Since June is the springtime height of the crawfish season, and since the wild crawfish are coming in so plentifully out of the Atchafalaya Basin, we are going to take the time to make a traditional dish from the swamplands”.

It does fill an hour or two because you must boil them and peel the tails, rather than simply buying them frozen into tidy blocks. But the cooking period is one of the reasons why the men like it so much: it takes them at least a six-pack of drinking, waiting around to eat.

“I have seen those same beverage-measured culinary methods used in my own native Austin, Texas. But solely in the incineration of large hooved mammals,” said the delightfully-accoutered sous chef.

After we ate that night, the demoiselle happily took three containers of bisque back to her rented double shotgun home to feed the other tenants. She received raves, and was so excited at the prospect of more domestic stovefront action that the very next day she bought herself a fourteen-inch chef’s toque. The tall white cylindrical hat brought her total height, counting the five-inch Manolo Blahnik spike heels, to seven feet eleven inches.

In the kitchen, like everywhere else, Porter Summerville would be noticed. When she passed not long ago, she had already made prior arrangements to be cremated in a daringly low-cut Anne Klein sheath. She had called from the hospice to inform me of her decision a month earlier. “Who knows who’ll be waiting there,” she’d said. “Dear boy, wardrobe for the afterlife is such a difficult decision, but you can’t go wrong with the classics.”

Porter’s favorite crawfish bisque

This recipe is based on the traditional Cajun manner, the way mom makes it back on the bayou – very different from the classic French form. It is a bit thinner, and has heads in it.

Ingredients

• 2 pounds freshly boiled and peeled crawfish tails (or head-on shrimp), with a minimum of 24 heads reserved

• ¼ pound andouille sausage (or mild sausage)

• ¾ cup bread crumbs

• ½ cup of a medium-dark roux

• 1 cup dry red wine

• 1 large onion

• ½ bell pepper

• 1 stalk celery

• 2 toes garlic

• ¼ cup fresh parsley

• 4 whole green onions

• ½ tsp salt (to taste) fresh-ground black pepper

• dash ground cayenne pepper

• 1 tsp Jamaican Pickapeppa sauce (or similar dark sauce)

• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

• ½ tsp hot sauce

• ¼ tsp ground sage

• ¼ tsp ground thyme

• 2 large bay leaves

Boil the crawfish, and peel a batch to yield approximately two pounds of tails/meat.

When peeling, save as much of the yellow fat as possible out of the heads, and put in a separate container. It looks nasty, but it tastes great. Try and not damage the heads.

Boil the shells for 10-15 minutes, and reserve at least one and one-half quarts of the liquid to use later.

Mince vegetables finely.

Make the roux. Be very patient and take it all the way to an ebony color. It’s going to smoke like hell. Keep stirring. You’ll be surprised at how dark you can get it without it burning (in spite of all the time it took you, if your roux does burn, throw it away and start over).

So, the roux is almost there. Toss in half the vegetables (you’ll use the other half in the stuffing), holding out the garlic until last, and sauté until the onions clarify. Add half the crawfish fat, and stir again.

Add the wine. Stir quickly to make sure the flour mixture doesn’t start sticking. Add in ¾ quart (only) of the reserved crawfish liquid a little at a time, and stir until smooth.

Add the spices. Drop heat to very low and let it sit for 45 mns. Check every so often to make sure it isn’t burning. Add more crawfish boil liquid as needed to keep soup consistency.

Take the heads, which should have cooled from boiling by now, and clean all the goop out of the insides out of the largest two dozen. Take off any extra legs. Then break off the “mouth” parts on the front of the head, optionally leaving the eyes and feelers. This may sound pretty gross, but it looks great later.

Rinse the heads under cool, clear water. You’ll probably have between two and four dozen, depending on the size of the crawfish.

Making the stuffing

Put 3-4 tbsp of olive oil in a deep skillet with the other half of the crawfish fat you saved, and heat the mixture with a medium flame. Mince the sausage into tiny pieces and start it sautéing. Toss in the other half of the veggies, cover and cook this mix until the vegetables once again clarify.

In the meantime, mince the crawfish tails very finely. They are already cooked, so they go in last. Mix well, then mix in the bread crumbs.

At this point, I usually add more Louisiana Hot Sauce. Taste, and judge for yourself.

As soon as this mix cools, which should be quickly, carefully stuff the little heads as full as they will go with the stuffing mix and gently lower them into the roux in the Dutch oven.

Cook over low heat for about 30 more minutes, then let the bisque rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Serve with the heads artistically arranged over white rice, half a dozen or more heads per serving, with a bowl full of roux. I usually drizzle a circle of heavy cream and then sprinkle with parsley for presentation.