Crawfish rice with veggies

Let me just say that I had the most wonderful 37th birthday weekend and day! All of it due to my family driving up to visit, and to my sweetest of monsters (that would be my husband) for taking yesterday off to keep me from cleaning out the fridge on my birthday. :-) We spent a wonderful day out so dinner was a mere afterthought. We were nicely sated with movie popcorn and M&M's, so had we skipped an evening meal altogether it would have been of no real consequence. But, if you have a few veggies to use up in the fridge and a rice cooker, the following meal is a no-brainer. I had a 1 lb. package of cooked and peeled crawfish tails in the freezer that I thought I'd use up and thus was born the following dish. You can make it with any combo of stuff you need to use up in your fridge.

Crawfish Rice with Veggies

Organic short-grain brown rice
Organic veggie broth (Central Market's is great...it gives a really beautiful color to the rice)
1/2 cup dry white wine
water
~1 Tbs butter

Take your frozen peas and crawfish out of the freezer to thaw on the counter while the rice cooks.

Use whatever amount of rice you'll need to feed your brood. I make the least amount my rice cooker will make, and that provides about 4 servings for the Monster and myself.
Just toss in the rice, wine, and then top with veggie broth to get close to the appropriate liquid level. Now top with water and make sure it's over the usual liquid level by a bit. This will provide a little softer tooth to the rice. The Central Market veggie broth is really heavy on carrots, etc. and the rice seems to need more water to get tender enough. Cook the rice as per your machina's instructions. Now go do your nails, or catch up on the latest Project Runway you have taped. When the rice is done, add butter, a little salt, and set aside. I made the rice earlier in the day and just let it sit on the counter til dinner yesterday.

olive oil
1/2 a large red onion, diced
a pinch of thyme
green onions (I had 2 to use up)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
chopped Italian parsley
Cajun seasoning
1 lb pack of cooked, ready-to-eat crawfish tails, thawed (freezer section at the grocery store)
frozen peas, thawed (as much of the package as you want to toss in)
diced fresh tomato (2?)
black pepper
Tabasco sauce (optional)
organic arugula, or some other baby greens (optional)

I set my lovely new birthday giftie (enameled cast iron pot) on the stove and tossed in a little olive oil. Saute up your red onion, garlic and thyme for a few minutes, then add the red bell pepper, scallion whites, and parsley. Saute til you're happy with it. Sprinkle some Cajun seasoning on your crawfish and add 'em to the mix along with the peas, diced tomato, scallion greens, black pepper. Cook ~1-2 min. then add all your rice. Toss to warm and you're done! Adjust seasoning to your tastes with more Cajun seasoning, pepper, or anything else you'd like to toss in. You could also add some grated cheese if you wanted to be really gnarly. Pepper jack?
I served this on a bed of arugula, but a nice handful of any kind of salad greens would be great.
My serving was doused liberally with Tabasco. :-)


There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
- Kurt Vonnegut