Comments & Curiosities -- Peter Buffa

First some housekeeping. Last week, I left you with a question and

promised to recognize the man, woman or child who submitted the first

correct answer. The question was this: Everyone knows that Donald Duck

has three nephews -- Huey, Louie and Dewey. But not everyone knows that

Donald’s girlfriend, Daisy Duck, has three nieces. What were their names?

Only a handful of you knew the answer, but the first to be tossed over

my electronic transom came from one William Samuelson, who correctly

identified Daisy Duck’s nieces as “April, May and June.” Get it? Three

months, three girls’ names. It’s like a joke. And so, much adulation and

two thumbs up to Mr. Samuelson for his impressive grasp of useless

information, which is perhaps the most important of all. For instance,

ever notice that only the warm months -- April through August -- are used

for names? Thousands of Junes and Aprils and Mays running around, but not

a November to be found. I’ll bet William Samuelson noticed.

Speaking about useless information, how about the invasion of the tiny

lobsters? Just weeks after the Chinese stowaways washed up on our shores,

a number of Corona del Mar residents reported waves of small red

shellfish doing the same. The diminutive denizens of the deep are no

bigger than shrimp, but they’re red and have pinchers, thus the “tiny

lobster” appellation.

According to the Newport Beach Fire and Marine Department, the crusty

crustaceans were sighted last week on the Peninsula and some Corona del

Mar beaches. But the question is what are they? The answer, my friends,

is not blowing in the wind, but can be found in Huntington Beach, or if

you prefer, Louisiana.

We’ll get to the Bayou State later, but Huntington Beach -- the large

city just to the north where it’s impossible to find anything -- has been

deluged with wave after wave of crayfish washing up on its beaches. Are

the Newport Beach “tiny lobsters” really the Huntington Beach crayfish,

slightly off-target? Nobody knows.

The “red shellfish” description in Newport Beach would certainly favor

that explanation. Lobsters -- large or small -- are dark brown in their

natural state, not red. Crayfish, on the other hand, are red in the water

and redder in the pot. By the way, is it “crayfish” or “crawfish,” or are

those two names for the same thing? And what are “crawdads”? Same?

Different? No wonder this stuff is confusing. Here’s what I found out,

after a crash Internet course on Cajun and Acadian cooking, the great

state of Louisiana in general, and the “Louisiana Crawfish Company” in

particular.

Newport and Huntington should just refer all questions about crayfish

and tiny lobsters to the Louisiana Crawfish Company, which is located, as

if you didn’t know, in Natchitoches, La. -- the oldest settlement in the

Louisiana Purchase and the heart of the Bayou State. To begin with, it’s

“crawfish.” Technically, it’s crayfish, but they pronounce it “crawfish”

in the South and write it the same way.

If you order crawfish in Baton Rouge and say “crayfish,” they will

look at you like you were a crawfish. I know the feeling. One morning

long, long ago, while I was in the Air Force, I was ordering breakfast at

the Maxwell AFB Officers Club in Birmingham, Ala. The waitress asked me

if I wanted grits with my eggs. “What are grits?” I asked. Her jaw

dropped, a little gasp came out, and she looked at me like I was a

crawfish.

As for crawdad, it’s a nickname for crawfish. In the South, it’s also

used as a slang verb. It means to back down from a challenge or lose your

nerve.

You don’t eat saltwater crayfish, so don’t bother running down to the

beach with a sack and a shovel. Freshwater crayfish is the real deal,

most of which is raised on farms today, such as the Louisiana Crawfish

Company. There are lots of recipes for cooking the little beasts, but the

traditional, preferred method is to boil them in special seasonings, like

Zatarain’s. Apparently, Zatarain’s is the good stuff -- either the crab

boil or the concentrated shrimp and crab boil.

By the way, if you’re making gumbo, youre supposed to use Tony

Chachere’s File -- a special seasoning made from sassafras leaves. What

caught my eye about Tony and his sassafras was that “file” is pronounced

“fee-lay,” which finally explains the line in the song “Jambalaya” --

“Jambalaya, crawfish pie and file gumbo. You could have knocked me over

with a feather. I always thought it was “filet gumbo!” Not that I had any

idea what that meant either, but at least I know how to spell it now.

So there you have it. Everything you always wanted to know -- and I

suspect a great deal more -- about crayfish, crawfish, crawdads, file

gumbo, tiny lobsters, Corona del Mar and Huntington Beach. I wonder what

will wash up onshore this week. One never knows, do one? By the way, we

can give everything a Cajun flavor this week, even without Zatarain’s

Crab Boil. Do you remember the opening line of “Jambalaya?”

“Goodbye, Joe; me gotta go.”

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays.

He may be reached via e-mail at PtrB4@aol.com.