Écrevisses au sauce Aurore, or Linguine O'Cajun

Thurs. 22 Feb.
As you might have guessed from the description of our abundant Mardi Gras boil below, we had some crawfish left over. What to do with squads of cold fully-armored cooked mudbugs? Use every bit of them that you can.
First, get all the tail meat out of them, using directions below, and set aside. Toss all exoskeleton parts, including unsucked heads, into a pot. Add water to barely cover, and boil it down for about a half an hour. In the meantime, boil water for pasta - we used linguine, but angel hair would be fine.
When the broth has taken all the flavor from the crawfish parts, strain it through a fine sieve (to eliminate even the skinniest bits of shell and mustard seeds) into a broad saucepan. Boil it down and concentrate it more. Add a dollop of heavy cream, and taste - if you like it, keep reducing it, or you can add a tiny squirt of tomato paste to make it a true sauce Aurore. Season with salt and/or white pepper as needed. When the pasta is done and the sauce is thick, throw the crawfish tails in the sauce to warm up, drain the pasta, and toss it all together.
Surprisingly elegant, and good enough for a special O'Cajun (okay, now I'm ashamed of myself).