Crawfish Stuffed Avocado.

I don't know which food is more popular down here... crawfish tails or avocados. Between the countless seafood restaurants and all the Mexican restaurants, both food groups are always in demand.

We went to a Kemah waterfront restaurant a few months ago, and one of the dishes on their menu consisted of crawfish tails in a tomato-based cheese sauce poured over lightly breaded and fried avocado halves. They served it with garlic bread, which I didn't eat because that particular restaurant always has the freshest of fish but the cheapest of breads. (I'm sorry, but unless the breads are homemade, southern Texas restaurants just don't have the greatest breads.)

When we went back to that restaurant to get that particular dish again, they had taken if off of the menu. What?! They offered to make it for us, then couldn't because the avocados they had in the kitchen were either too ripe or not ripe enough. The dishes that we did order that day weren't so great, and we've not been back there since.

I have, however, managed to make the Crawfish Stuffed Avocado dish. As with all these restaurant recipes, if you sit there and examine what's in them, you can sometimes figure out how they're made. It's just food, not rocket science. And if it doesn't come out right, so what? It's not your last meal.... although, you never know.

The crawfish tails were in a tomato-based cream sauce with onions.... I make a basic roux with butter, milk and flour-- but first, I sauted diced onions and garlic in the butter before adding the cheese to really thicken it. I don't know the measurements.... I just used a two-quart saucepan and judged the amounts according to the size of the pot. As for the cheese--- sometimes it was Swiss, other times it was Jarlsburg.

When the cream sauce was nice and thick, I added about a third of a regular-sized can of Campbell's low-sodium tomato soup, along with two tablespoons of picante sauce (also a staple down here), and a little over a teaspoon of Old Bay seasoning (lots of spices in there to shake up the crawfish).

Then the crawfish tails.... they sell the tails in a frozen one-pound package. Once you thaw it out, you squeeze out the excess water and add the crawfish into the very thick bisque-like mixture. Heat that through and taste it to see if it needs more picante sauce or more Old Bay. (Be careful with the Old Bay-- it has a kick to it that doesn't start kicking till after you've swallowed.)

The avocados have to be firm, but ripe enough so they're not too hard. (Avocado is such a picky fruit. If they're too soft, they'll get mushy; if they're too hard, they will have the consistency of a fresh coconut.) You slice them lengthwise, take out the pit (resist the urge to plant it) and then cover them with just a little bit of very fine breadcrumbs. Into one of my cast iron pans goes a tiny dab of butter, then each side of the avocado gets browned lightly. (While this is happening, the crawfish mixture is getting thicker, bubbly and hot and if you have cats, now is the time to put them on your screen-porch.)

Onto a plate goes one of two of the avocado halves, with the pit-less part facing up. Pour the hot crawfish mixture on top of the avocado, and if you have fresh-baked rolls, bread-machine bread, or very good garlic bread, add a slice of that for dipping. (If all you have is supermarket-style Italian bread that an Italian has never laid hands or eyes on, forget the bread.)


I decided to write this recipe down because it's been a while since I've made it, and this afternoon as I was about to defrost the crawfish, I stood there in my kitchen looking out the window at the rain trying to remember how I made this dish the last time. It's too bad that the waterfront restaurant took this off of their menu, but that's okay. Mine is better, because I've eliminated most of the fats, and I just lightly brown the avocado instead of deep-frying it, which saves even more calories. This sounds like a weird recipe, but the taste of the avocado with the crawfish mixture is really good. I would imagine, if you live in a part of the country where crawfish aren't available, you could make this recipe with shrimp. But the crawfish are cuter.