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By Root 1025 0

all crayfish recipes is, I suppose, Sauce Nantua, but a simpler crayfish sauce is also excellent with chicken, as you will see if you try the following recipe.

CHICKEN WITH CRAYFISH

This is a beautiful recipe from Le Lièvre Amoureux at Saint Lattier in the Isère.

Serves 6

1 chicken, cut into joints

8 tablespoons butter

salt, pepper

375 ml (12 fl oz) dry white wine

2 large tomatoes, peeled, chopped

1 kg (2 lb) crayfish

1 tablespoon chopped shallot

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 glass cognac

2 tablespoons plain flour

125 ml (4 fl oz) chicken stock

pinch of saffron

90 ml (3 fl oz) Madeira

3 tablespoons double cream

1 tablespoon fresh chervil, chopped

Fry the chicken in half the butter until lightly browned. Season, and add a third of the wine. Cover and leave to simmer, adding the rest of the wine at intervals. About io minutes before the chicken is cooked, put the tomatoes into the pan and finish cooking.

To cook the crayfish, fry them in the rest of the butter until they turn red. Add the shallot and garlic, stirring them into the pan. Pour on the cognac and set it alight. Sprinkle on the flour, let it brown a little and moisten with the chicken stock and dry white wine. Add the saffron and seasoning, and leave to simmer for 3 minutes. Pour in the chicken and its cooking liquor. Cover and leave for another 3 minutes. Finally stir in the Madeira and cream.

Put the chicken pieces on a warm serving dish with the crayfish, keeping a few of these to garnish the top. Pour the sauce over, without sieving it, and sprinkle with chervil.

ÉCREVISSES À LA NAGE

This is a favourite French way of serving these rare and delicious creatures so long as you have plenty. Allow a minimum of 6 per person: 9 or 12 will be more gratefully received.

Serves 6

white wine court bouillon, no. 5*

a few grains of aniseed

cayenne pepper

½ stick celery

36 or more crayfish

Boil the court bouillon, with the extra aromatics, until reduced by half.

Meanwhile, wash the live crayfish in plenty of water, drain them well. Remove the intestine if you can, by pulling out the middle tail fin. Tip them into the fast-boiling liquid and simmer for 12 minutes, with the lid on the pan.

Put the unshelled crayfish into a bowl (they are often piled up in an elegant arrangement) and strain the bouillon over them.

SAUCE NANTUA

This is a fine sauce made with freshwater crayfish – not with lobster. Any dish with the word Nantua attached to it means ‘garnished with freshwater crayfish and serve with Sauce Nantua’.

Once after a brief holiday at Lake Annecy, we stopped at this small town in the mountains with its own calm blue lake. I went to buy picnic food, and remembered being disappointed that the streets were not paved with écrevisses. There weren’t any in the shops either. Perhaps I was just unlucky. Perhaps it was the wrong day. Perhaps the entire haul of those miniature lobsters from the many streams around the town is taken by the two best hotels. Certainly their menus proclaimed Quenelles de brochet Nantua, Gratin d’écrevisses Nantua, Croustade de queues d’écrevisses.

In our part of western France the lack of crayfish is lamented. Detergents are blamed, so are chemical fertilizers and weed-killers washed by rain from the soil into small streams. If you are lucky and live in the Cotswolds, or some other part of England where crayfish are to be found, plan to make this delicious sauce. Then go out and find pike for the quenelles on p. 275 or else invest in a boiling fowl, as this is good with Sauce Nantua: or serve the sauce with poached sole or salmon.

Once you have achieved the crayfish, your troubles are over. To a béchamel sauce*, add 300 ml (10 fl oz) single cream and reduce to about 450 ml (15 fl oz) – a nice creamy consistency. Finish with 3 tablespoons double cream, 3–5 tablespoons of crayfish butter (p. 210), and a generous tablespoon of shelled crayfish tails. Truffles and truffle juice may be added, but for most people this is even further