I have cooked for my sister before and she has cooked for me. But I have never really cooked with my sister. In the last week of August that changed. My sister, Raechel and her family along with my family had rented a couple cabins at Moore's Lodge on Leech Lake. Raechel and I had grown up there at our grandparents cabins and have always loved it up there so every summer we try to spend a week up there.
This year we ran into some bad weather and it was cold and rainy and not conducive to lake activities. We had gone into Bemidji for the day and had stopped at a roadside store that was selling wild rice. We decided that we were going to try and make a wild rice soup when we got back to the cabin. I had also been trapping crayfish that week and the idea of a crayfish wild rice soup sounded like fun.
I boiled up about 8 pounds of crayfish and recruited Reachel and her husband Matt to help peel the tails and gather all the meet for out soup. With the three of us working on it we had a pound of tail meat in no time flat and were able to just eat a bunch along the way. Little by little we started working on our soup and adding things here and there. Starting with the carrots and onions and some garlic and then the stock and the rice and then Raech thought she would like corn. We spent the whole afternoon making this soup and sipping on Sumac lemonade cocktails.
It was a really nice afternoon. The kids all watched shows and behaved themselves for the most part and my wife took notes and pictures through the whole process just in case someone wanted to right a blog post about it later. By the time the soup was done we had, in my opinion the most beautiful crayfish wild rice soup ever made. (possibly the only one ever made in northern Minnesota). As kids Raechel and I didn't always get along but as adults we seem to make a pretty good cooking duo. Hopefully we will be able to collaborate on something else sooner rather than later.
Crayfish Wild Rice Soup
3 cups cooked wild rice
1 cup chopped celery
1 medium onion, diced
2 large carrots, diced
3 cloves of garlic minced
1 red pepper, diced
1 1/2 cups corn
1/4 cup butter,
1/4 cup olive oil
1/3 cup flour
8 cups vegetable stock
1 pint of half and half
1 pound cooked crayfish tail meat
salt and pepper to taste
Heat the butter and oil in a large stock pot and start sauteing the vegetables starting with the carrots as they will take the longest. then add the celery, onions, pepper and garlic. Add the flour and stir to combine, add the wild rice and the stock and stir together. bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the corn and the crayfish and then stir in the Half and half. Bring back up to a simmer for 10 minutes and season with salt and pepper.
