[Taken from the Jazz and Heritage Festival Cookbook, now sadly out of print.]As prepared by: The Fontana Family, New Orleans, Louisiana.
The Fontanas are one of the largest, oldest, and best known Italian families to settle in New Orleans, originally coming from various parts of Italy and settling in Louisiana in the early 1850's. This recipe is the one served at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival boiled crawfish booth. The secret is to serve hot.
Place all ingredients in the biggest pot that you can get your hands on and bring to a good boil for about 15 minutes. As all comes to a boil, put your face over the steam and take 10 deep breaths, as the boiling cayenne, garlic, and lemon mist is good for your soul - being careful to breathe only through you nose.
- 30 pounds live crawfish
- 15 ounces cayenne pepper, plus 5 ounces additional Lagniappe
- 2 ounces Tabasco sauce
- 20 cloves garlic, cut cloves in half, do not peel or crush
- 3 dozen lemons, sliced in half
- 1 cup olive oil
- 20 bay leaves
- 4 ounces Louisiana hot sauce
- 52 ounces salt (approximately 2 pounds)
- 10 bags of Zatarain's crab boil, or 10 recipes seafood boil seasoning
In the meantime, the crawfish should have been soaking in cold fresh water, with a couple of boxes of salt emptied into it as to allow "mud bugs" to be spitting out the mud.
Put crawfish in boiling water. After water comes to boil again, add 10 ears freshly peeled corn of the cob and 20 small potatoes. Allow 20-30 minutes cooking time. Remove and eat the potatoes and corn with fresh butter first, allowing the crawfish to soak in the pot for another 20 minutes after turning off the boiling water. Strain and serve the crawfish hot.