Creole Recipes

Someone asked me for the crawfish creole recipe, so I figured I would post it here in case anyone else wanted it. A creole is like a tomato sauce kinda? It was originally from The Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine. I got it from Best of the Best from Louisiana. And then I modified it. I made three recipes-worth since I was making alligator (big oval pot in the back), crawfish (big round pot in the middle), and no-meat (small round pot up front) versions. But here is a single recipe. The directions from the actual recipe were really helpful . . . no they totally weren't. They say things like "saute all seasonings until done." Not helpful. Especially since I dont consider 3 cups of vegetables "seasonings." But here is what I did.

Creole Sauce
Ingredients:
4 Tablespoons vegan margarine (recipe calls for butter, wanted to make vegan)
1 T canola oil
6 Tablespoons brown rice flour (recipe calls for flour, wanted to make gluten-free)
1 cup chopped onions
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped green bell pepper
6 cloves garlic, chopped
Juice of 1 lemon
4 bay leaves
1/2 cup hot water
1/2 tsp sugar
16-oz can tomato sauce (I used 52 oz for 3x recipe)

Directions:
Melt margarine in heavy bottom pot (I used the Le Creuset French Oven). Add oil. Add onions, celery, pepper and garlic. Saute until tender. Add lemon juice, bay leaves and flour. Mix until flour is covered vegetables. Add tomato sauce, hot water and sugar. Cook over medium heat for 30 minutes.

I did that much on Thursday night. Then I let it cool and put it in the fridge until Saturday. I took it out and let it get to room temp and then split it into 3 pots (crawfish, alligator, no-meat). I added the meat to each one (or not meat) and then let it simmer for about an hour before putting it out. The no-meat one I simmered for about 30 minutes by itself.

Alligator:
We bought 2.75 lbs of alligator steak, frozen. We thawed this overnight in the fridge. Then I cut each steak into thirds, you can see the picture here. I put them in a big pot, added some no-salt creole seasoning, 1/4 tsp salt and enough water to cover the pieces. I brought this to a fast boil and boiled for 3 minutes. Then I removed the pieces from the water and let them cool, keeping the water. They were not completely cooked all the way though. It looked a lot like chicken, white on the outside, pink in the middle. Once they were cool we cut them into bite sized pieces and then added them to the creole sauce. I used some of the cooking water to thin out the sauce some since it had gotten pretty thick in the fridge.

Crawfish:
We bought cleaned, cooked, seasoned crawfish meat (about 2-2 1/2 lbs) from Reading Terminal and so it was all ready to go. I added it to the sauce with the water from the container to thin it out some.

The recipe said to serve over rice with chopped green onions. I totally forgot the green onions.