Jambalaya and a crawfish pie...

I'm not sure a Louisiana crawfish pie would really resemble this shrimp and mussel tourte, but I'm sure it wouldn't be that much better to eat. We saw a cooking show host we like, Eric Léautey, make it on his Cuisine TV show last week and we decided to try it. He called it an empanada, but I say it's a tourte, which is a two-crust pie.

First clean and de-beard a kilogram of fresh mussels. Put an inch or so of water in a big pot and bring it to a boil. Throw in the mussels and let them steam just until they open up.

Mussels cleaned and ready for steaming

Mussels steamed and ready to be taken out of their shells

Take the mussels out of the pot — lift them out with a slotted spoon, because if you pour the steaming liquid over them you might find a lot of sand in your mussels. Let the mussels cool.

Mussels removed from their shells

Shell, devein, and cook about a pound of shrimp (or buy them shelled, deveined, cooked, and frozen — that's how we get them in France). Don't leave any shell on the shrimp.

I took this picture before I removed the shrimps' tails

Chopped tomatoes, cleaned shrimp and mussels, and herbs
on the work surface where Walt rolls out the pie dough

To make a stuffing, chop some onion, shallot, and/or garlic finely. Also chop some ripe tomatoes and set them aside. Then sauté 200 grams of smoked lardons (use bacon or ham in the U.S. unless you can get slab bacon, or don't use pork at all) along with the onions.

I added a little can of corn to the filling — an American flavor.

When those ingredients are cooked, take the pan off the heat and stir in soem chopped herbs, the chopped tomatoes, the steamed mussels, and the cooked shrimp. Add other ingredients if you want to — I had some cold boiled potatoes, so I diced those up into the mixture too, along with some corn out of a can.

Off the heat, mix in the tomatoes, shrimp, mussels, and herbs

Line a pie pan with a crust (Walt made pâte brisée, the standard pastry for pies) and blind-bake it for 10 minutes in a medium oven. Paint the bottom of the crust with beaten egg yolk and pour in the filling.

The filling in the bottom crust

The pie almost ready to go into the oven

Lay the top crust over the pie and tuck it in around the edges to seal it. Cut a hole in the top crust to let steam escape as the pie cooks, and paint the top with egg yolk to make it brown nicely.

The pie after 35 minutes in the oven at 350ºF (180ºC)

Let the pie cool for 10 or 15 minutes after it comes out of the oven. Then cut into it and enjoy!

Shrimp and mussel pie

The first piece out of the pie is always kind of a mess, isn't it?