Crawfish Corn Spoonbread

Spoonbread is one of those dishes that separates Louisiana cooks from everybody else. Most folks think cornbread, but we know better. This is a custard. Soft enough to eat with a spoon, rich enough to make you close your eyes, and when you add crawfish and fresh corn, you have got something that belongs on the finest brunch table in New Orleans.

My grandmother Evangeline made spoonbread every Sunday after church. She would have a cast iron skillet waiting in a hot oven while we walked in the door, and by the time we changed out of our good clothes, that kitchen smelled like butter and cornmeal and home. I added crawfish to her recipe thirty years ago at Lagniappe, and it became one of our most requested brunch dishes. The sweet tail meat pairs with the corn like they were born in the same bayou, which, if you think about it, they were.

The secret is treating this like a soufflé. You build a rich cornmeal base, fold in beaten eggs gently, and let the oven do the heavy lifting. It puffs up golden and proud, then settles into something between a custard and a cloud. Season the crawfish before it goes in. Season the vegetables when they hit the pan. Taste the batter before baking. That is the bayou way: layers of flavor built one decision at a time.