I have an obsession with crayfish. Ever since I was a little boy and would catch them in the lake at my grandparents house I have loved them. Although I have had access to them most of my life I had never eaten one until about 12 years ago. When I first got interested in cooking all I really wanted to do was learn to cook Crayfish. The first cookbook I ever bought was Emeril's TV dinners, it has an entire section on how to cook Crayfish. I try to work crayfish in whenever possible but being from Minnesota they are not always easy to find in stores and I haven't started to catch my own, yet. Occasionally I am able to find 1 pound bags of crayfish tail meat at the grocery store and when I do I like to stock up. So when I found them at the store the other day I bought several pounds and am planning several dishes with them.
One of the great things about crayfish is that they are used a lot in cajun and scandinavian cuisines, which just happen to be two of my favorites. In the past I have used Crayfish to make patties, stews, salads and have used them as a topping for other dishes. The first thing I wanted to make with the most recent batch of crayfish was a filling for Ravioli. I started with onions, green peppers, celery and garlic and sauteed them in a pan until soft. I then added the crayfish tails and cooked for about 5 more minutes. I took the whole mixture and put it into a food processor and mixed until almost smooth. I was then ready to spoon the mixture into the pasta.
I love making ravioli because my hand cranked pasta maker makes these perfect sheets of pasta and all you have to do in spoon on your mixture fold them over and cut and crimp them. It is a lot easier than people think. After you crimp the ravioli's you boil them in salted water for 3-5 minutes depending on how done you like your pasta. I covered mine with a little alfredo and cajun spice mix. I really wish I had more free time to start trapping crayfish, because these ravioli were delicious and I would love to have a stock of crayfish in my freezer. Maybe that will be my next project.
Crayfish Ravioli
1 medium sized onion
1 green pepper
2 stalks of celery
5 cloves of garlic
1 pound of crayfish tail meat
4 tablespoons of butter
dice up the peppers, onions, garlic and celery and saute in butter over medium heat until soft. add the tail meat and cook for about 5 more minutes. Chop the mixture in a food processor until it forms a thick paste. spoon the mixture onto sheets of pasta and form ravioli's. Boil the raviolis in salted water for 3-5 minutes.
To make the pasta mix together 3 cups all purpose flour with 1 tablespoon olive oil and 4 eggs. if the dough is to dry add 1 tablespoon of water until the pasta dough is moist and pliable, then feed it through a pasta roller to make sheets of pasta.
