This is one of the 'Yat-iest dishes I've ever created, and I can't believe I was the person who made it happen.  I like to say, "It's everything you love about a crawfish boil re-configured into a salad."  We warm up spicy LA. crawfish tails, artichoke slices, and early in the season corn is blended with the first two elements.  When corn is super fresh at the end of crawfish season, I'll change the corn to pickled corn to set off texture and temperatures to different degrees.  Before, we've boiled potatoes in spicy crab boil, and we leave 'em to steep until needed.  Typically we use little red "creamer" potatoes, but the other night we had to substitute Yukon Golds which worked just fine.  For the pick-up, we drop a cut crab boiled potato into our little duck fat fryer, you know, to warm it up real nice.  We put a sturdy field green, like mache or arugula, in the center of the plate.  You could downscale and use romaine or even iceberg lettuce, but I especially like the buttery flavor of mache.  It surprised me how well the little green leaves of mache stood up to the onslaught of warmed crawfish and vegetables, but it's quite sturdy.  Then we sprinkle salt over the duck fat fried, crab boiled potatoes, and finish the plate with roasted garlic aioli.  The aioli, as every French person knows, goes very well with the potatoes, and that merges our Louisiana heritage w/ the ancient French roots of our cuisine.  

     I like a crawfish boil's extras as much as the fiery crustaceans: the boiled potatoes and wheels of corn-on-the-cob.  I especially love those Creole-Italian flourishes to a good boil with several entire heads of garlic picking up the heat of the boil and getting so soft from the boil.  The first guys that put artichokes in a boil were my kind of cook.  It's a serious 2-for-1 deal getting artichokes, which are as messy as crawfish to enjoy so bust out the reams of newspaper on the picnic table and let's get after it!!

    I first made this dish up at Christian's, right around Jazzfest, April '05.  We sold an ever-living ton of 'em.  Right now at The Delachaise, we don't really deal in tons, but the salad is selling pretty dang good w/ nothing but clean plates coming back.  As far as I know, I was the first cook to call it a "Crawfish Boil" salad.  Sure, there have been lots of crawfish salads made in and around Louisiana for a long time.  But I swear I had never seen or heard of a dish that encapsulated all the elements of our favorite Bayou State pasttime into a salald before I made it up.  I woulda believed that some little seafood, neighborhood joint woulda had this on their menu, but I've been to several of these places around New Orleans and never saw it.  

     Of course, my better half gets all liquored up at Commander's Palace in May '05, and starts blabbing about this very dish to my good friend, Danny Trace (then a sous chef at CP, now Exec. Chef at the very fine Cafe Adelaide).  Next week, CP has their own version on the menu, and it's something Danny still does at Adelaide.  That's fine w/ me because honestly there is no such thing as an original idea in cooking.  I do not believe cooks should entertain the idea of legal trademarks on their recipes.  It rubs me the wrong way.  I have confidence in my abilities, and if somebody else likes what I do, can they steal it?  What's to steal?  It's all food, using techniques that are exchanged across generations, and ultimately it comes down to the nuances of flavor.  I make my food according to my tastes, another chef pursues the very same ingredients with a very different outcome.  I'm happy to make the contribution to Louisiana foodways, if the whole city starts to make "Crawfish Boil" Salads, I'll be proud as hell.  Do I deserve to make a million dollars from it?  I guess if I was Al Copeland I could, but being a suit ain't my strong suit.  

    So I give it two weeks before somebody who reads this post trademarks this dish.  If it gets on an Applebee's menu, I'll want to learn to shoot a sawed-off; nonetheless, I'm excited to put this dish on The Delachaise menu tomorrow.  I'm curious whether the sales will still be as hot as now once it's an official member of the menu.  We'll see.  Meanwhile, I reserve my rights to have as much fun as possible, and if I ever figure how to make money at it, I'll be sure to let you all know.