Cajun Crawfish

“The key to good étouffée,” says Barry Ancelet’s mother, Maude, “is letting the butter and crawfish have their say.” Hand-lettered signs in front of roadside shacks in Cajun country spell it “A-2-FAY” and it means suffocated or smothered. (When Creoles smother crawfish, they do it in a white or blond roux and call it “écrevisses gratinées.”) Cajuns smother theirs in a chocolate-black roux to thicken the courtbouillon (pronounced Cajun-style “coo-byong”), smoothed out with quantities