Now, my Aunt and Uncle have lived in Plano, another Dallas suburb, for nigh 20 years, so I've spent a fair amount of time in the area, and done all the big tourist things: Dealy Plaza, The Grassy Knoll, the 6th Floor Book Depository, etc. And honestly, considering the brevity of this trip, I was really in no mood to traipse around seeing tourist sites. I was there to see family, chill and do a little studying for my WSET class.
In our family, food and drink are central to any gathering of the tribe. Now, many of you here have heard me complain before about the lack of my native vittles up here in the Carolina Piedmont. Fact is, good Cajun sausage, crawfish and Gulf oysters are hard to find up here, and they don't come cheaply when you can get them. That's not the case in Dallas. There are enough Louisianians relocated across the state line, and in close enough proximity to the bounty of the Gulf, that Louisiana food is easy enough to obtain. Furthermore, my parents had some nice things in their wine rack that were in need of liberation.
The prices aren't cheap, but as they say, you get what you pay for. We took home our steaks and served them with some oven roasted beets a potato galette and a 2007 Grgich Hills Merlot.
It didn't suck. While I wasn't in the mood to take all the necessary notes for a full review of the Grgich Hills Merlot, it was a lovely wine. As we all know, '07 was a benchmark year for Napa, and this bottle lived up to every bit of the hype. Rich, full bodied, balancing power and velvet, it was everything a Merlot should be, and nothing it shouldn't.
* * * * * * * * * *
The next night we went over to my Aunt and Uncle's in Plano for a crawfish boil. A good crawfish boil is one of the things that I miss the most about New Orleans. They are difficult and expensive to obtain anywhere outside of Louisisana, and the further away you get the higher the price climbs. Part of the reason for this is, unlike shrimp they don't really freeze well, and unlike blue crabs they aren't farmed anywhere but Louisiana. It also can be accounted for by the fact that most people who haven't grown up eating them don't really know what to do with them; they don't know how to eat them and they don't know how to cook them. Needless to say, when I get the chance to "berl" some mudbugs, I jump at it.

The whole process begins by plunging your mudbugs into a tub of salted water. This forces the crawfish to puke and excrete, cleaning their innards of the muck that is their habitat, and resulting in a crawfish of cleaner flavor. Here you can see the crawfish prior to their salty immersion. They have a distinctly different coloration while alive than they will when they come out of the pot.

When they're ready, after this half hour soak, you'll end up with something that looks a bit like this:

A liberal spread of newspaper is the traditional tablecloth for boils, and an abundance of beer is the traditional beverage accompaniment. And heaven help you if you forget to stock up on paper towels; this isn't eating for the dainty. When you're all done, just roll up the heads and shells in the newspaper and dispose.
I ate and ate and ate, and when I could no longer eat anymore, I had a digestif:

That's it for the first two nights. Stay tuned for chapter II, wherein we discuss Oysters and Sancerre.
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