Crawfish Salad Lettuce Wraps

Sometimes the bayou gives you a gift that needs nothing more than a light touch. Crawfish salad is that gift. You take the sweet, tender meat from Louisiana's favorite crustacean and dress it simply: good mayonnaise, a hit of Creole mustard, fresh vegetables for crunch. That's the bayou way.

My grandmother Evangeline made this after every crawfish boil, using the tails that were too good to waste but too few to make another meal. She'd mix them with whatever was fresh from the garden, spoon the salad onto crackers, and we'd eat standing at her kitchen counter. At Lagniappe, I serve it in butter lettuce cups because they're cool, crisp, and let the crawfish shine without bread getting in the way.

The secret here is restraint. Season the crawfish gently. Let the natural sweetness come through. The dressing should coat, not drown. And for heaven's sake, use Louisiana crawfish. I've tasted the imported stuff, and it's not the same animal. The meat should taste like the bayou: clean, sweet, with that mineral edge that comes from our waters.