Cajun Crawfish and Andouille Omelette

This is a great eye opener omelette to start a day with!

     Cajun cooking requires many specific ingredients, herbs and cooking techniques.  Cajun cooking is a combination of old French cuisine mixed with new world ingredients.  There are many Spanish, Native American and African ingredients that were adopted by Cajuns, but the basic cooking techniques are 250 to 500 year old classic French.  

     Cajuns from a couple centuries ago created their own rules of fine cuisine that continue to this day.  To cook true Cajun food, you have to know the techniques and guidelines.  Shortcuts and bastardization will leave a cook with no respect, when cooking Cajun food.  Too many young chefs laughingly state that the traditional ways of cooking any cuisine can be modified to make cooking much easier.  Any gourmand or traditional chef would not be satisfied with tasting food that is not cooked with classic methods.  

     I never try to fool my customers, by serving shortcut food.  That would be cheating!  A chef earns respect and is not awarded respect.  A good test of how much respect that a chef has, is whether other chefs hang around to taste the food or sit down and order the food that was cooked.  

     Most of the great chefs that I worked with nearly always asked me to cook their personal meal,  rather than request food from any other chef in the restaurant kitchen.  The executive chef teachers at Le Cordon Bleu used to hang around like vultures, when they knew that I was cooking something interesting!  That is a good compliment for any chef that is attending a culinary school.  Even better, while working as a saute chef at the Le cordon Bleu campus restaurant, the executive chefs had a habit of stealing personal meals that I cooked for myself!  My food looks good and tastes like it should traditionally taste, so culinary educators nabbed my food at every opportunity.       

     I seem to have the uncanny ability to perfectly season food and I have a thorough understanding of what herbs and spices are required for specific cuisine recipes.  Years of cooking experience are part of learning how to properly season food, but research is truly the key.  I spent years at public libraries reading old books of classic cuisine and specific cuisine cookbooks.  I actually wrote volumes of notes, while reading and researching.  None of my culinary research was required by a chef school or job.  I simply did the research on my own, so I could be correct when cooking any classic cuisine and it turned into a great learning experience.  

     I cannot stress how important self motivated research is to an upcoming great chef.  Knowing the names and specific ingredients of classic cuisine and being able to use the proper name for an entree is much more intelligent sounding that saying "Well, I just put things together that taste great and I know nothing about French cuisine language or cooking techniques."  A statement like that will leave those who are educated to believe that a chef is very amateuristic.  

     Happy go lucky chefs usually make the mistake of mislabeling bastardized cuisine with classic cuisine names and as a result, the level of respect quickly deteriorates.  This is why many sous chefs never graduate into the chef de cuisine or executive chef ranks.  At the chef de cuisine level or executive chef level, if you do not thoroughly know what you are doing and do not use the proper terminology for the cuisine that you present, then you will be labeled as a second rate chef or a complete joke by experienced chefs!  Even worse, a restaurant may lose a hard earned Michelin star, because the food is not really what it is supposed to be.  

      Home cooks, people who like to dine out, gourmands and upcoming chefs can all benefit by doing some cuisine research.  Being able to know whether a chef is really a fool or whether the meal that you purchased was authentic and worth the price paid is good consumer protection.  

     Culinary research is self motivated, whether it is thirty minutes per year or an intensive study.  It pays to learn on your own!  After a certain level of research is done, it becomes easier to filter which culinary information is correct and which is not authentic.  After being able to discern authenticity, it becomes difficult to accept any food that is not the real thing.  It becomes difficult to watch chefs on television without creating doubt about their authenticity too.  After researching culinary information and learning to recognize culinary authenticity, you will find that you have set higher standards for yourself as a consumer, chef or both!  Higher standards do equate to being gourmet!        

           

     Cajun Crawfish and Andouille Omelette:
     Be sure to have all the ingredients ready, before starting this recipe!  The added vegetables will stop the brown roux from cooking any further.
     Place these vegetables in a bowl and set them aside:
     - 4 tablespoons of small chopped onion
     - 2 tablespoons of small chopped celery
     - 2 tablespoons of small chopped mixed red and green bell pepper
     Heat 6 pats of unsalted butter in a sauce pot over medium/medium high heat. 
     Add an equal amount of flour while stirring. 
     Constantly stir, till a dark brown roux is formed.  (A brown roux will scorch and taste bitter, if it is not constantly stirred!)
     Immediately add the reserved vegetables and stir. 
     Add 2 cloves of chopped garlic.
     Add 1 chopped green onion. 
     Add 1 1/2 cups of shrimp broth. 
     Add 3 ounces of shelled crawfish tails and the orange fat from behind the crawfish heads.
     Add 3 ounces of sliced andouille sausage. 
     Add 1 pinch each of these herbs:
     - thyme
     - tarragon
     - marjoram
     - oregano
     - basil
     Add 2 pinches of chopped parsley.
     Add 1/2 teaspoon of paprika.
     Add 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper.
     Add black pepper and sea salt. 
     Add 1 small squeeze of lemon juice.
     Add 1/4 cup of dry white wine.
     Bring the sauce to a boil and stir.
     Reduce the the temperature to low heat.
     Simmer and reduce the sauce, till it becomes a medium thin sauce consistency.
     Keep the Cajun Crawfish and Andouille sauce warm over very low heat.
     Heat a non-stick saute pan over medium/medium low heat.
     Add 3 pats of unsalted butter.
     Add 2 whisked eggs.
     Even the edges of the omelette with a rubber spatula. 
     Flip the omelette when the bottom half becomes cooked firm.
     When the omelette becomes firm and the eggs are fully cooked, spoon some of the Cajun crawfish and sausage onto the omelette.
     Triple fold the omelette as you slide it onto a plate. 
     Spoon the remaining Cajun crawfish and andouille over the omelette. 
     Sprinkle some thin sliced green onion over the omelette.
  
     The flavors of crawfish and smoked andouille sausage go so very well together!  The spicy level of cayenne pepper in the sauce can be adjusted to personal taste.
     I never cook a boring breakfast!  This Cajun crawfish and andouille omelette is yummy!  ...  Shawna