72 replies to this topic

[Bond Girl]

Okay, my jambalaya turned out kind of flat. Hmmm, will move over to the Jambalaya thread now.

[Mayhaw Man]

I made stock from the Thanksgiving Turkey yesterday and am making Turkey and Andouille Gumbo for dinner tonight and will have a bunch leftover for freezing.
I got ten pounds of Texmati really cheap at the health food store yesterday, thanks to a broken bag, and will be making a big pile to go with it.

Bread from my recent trip to Lejeune's Bakery in Jeanerette, LA and a salad of butter lettuce, avacado, grapefruit, and a very thin, not very sweet, poppyseed vinaigarette.

[robyn]

I made stock from the Thanksgiving Turkey yesterday and am making Turkey and Andouille Gumbo for dinner tonight and will have a bunch leftover for freezing.
I got ten pounds of Texmati really cheap at the health food store yesterday, thanks to a broken bag, and will be making a big pile to go with it.

Bread from my recent trip to Lejeune's Bakery in Jeanerette, LA and a salad of butter lettuce, avacado, grapefruit, and a very thin, not very sweet, poppyseed vinaigarette.

I've bought broken bags of topsoil before - but never rice. Perhaps that's because 10 pounds is about enough to last me for a year.

Like your salad. I make a similar one - no avocados - but with toasted pecans or walnuts - whichever happens to be handy. I'll add the avocados next time and see what happens. By the way - making anything with grapefruit used to be agony (I am terrible with knives) - but since they started selling those peeled red grapefruit sections in jars - it's an ingredient I use all of the time. Robyn

[Mayhaw Man]

[ By the way - making anything with grapefruit used to be agony (I am terrible with knives) - but since they started selling those peeled red grapefruit sections in jars - it's an ingredient I use all of the time. Robyn

Exactly.

Ditto for salads. I like to cook and for some reason have always disliked making salads (but not dressings for some reason), but since the advent of the bag o' salad I eat them more frequently at home.

Gumbo turned out great. I used Richard's Smoked Pork Sausage instead of Andouille, which is pretty much the gold standard of commercial sausage down here. The andouille from Poche's or Hebert's is better, but I kinda save it for special occasions as I have to drive a bit to get it.

Anyway, the rice was really a bargain. Small tear in one corner of a big cloth bag and the guy practically gave it to me. Came home and vacu sealed it in one pound bags and put it in the freezer. It'll last 6 months.

[fifi]

Okay, my jambalaya turned out kind of flat. Hmmm, will move over to the Jambalaya thread now.

Well, what I have found when gumbo, jambalaya or whatever comes out flat, the culprit is often salt. As in... not enough of it. Cajun cuisine can be pretty salty. They don't use a lot of different kinds of spices so you are pretty dependent on the salt component to bring out the flavors and bring it all together. I tend to add my salt in "layers". That means that, for jambalaya, I will salt the trinity when I am sauteing that. The raw meat will be preseasoned. Of course, the sausage is already seasoned. I use fairly rich stock so there is a little saltiness there. Then I taste the liquid before putting the lid on to cook the rice, allowing for the fact that the rice will be absorbing some of the salt and diluting it out.

Brooks... Am I wrong about that? I mean, you can only use so much cayenne.

[Dave the Cook]

I think you're right, fifi. I also think good ol' black pepper gets overlooked. To my taste, it lets you cut back on the salt somewhat, and rounds out the flavor.

Certainly Prudhomme preaches the layering you're talking about. But he also uses more seasoning than just cayenne, salt and pepper.

[Bond Girl]

Salt! I bet that's it! Thanks fiifi.

[fifi]

You are correct, Dave. Prudhomme has been the guiding light in expanding Cajun cuisine seasoning. He advocates the use of multiple peppers (cayenne, black and white for instance) that also plays on the burn characteristics of each so that the warmth of the peppers and their effect on different areas of the mouth and throat are almost "orchestrated". He is a master at that. And I think that he has taken the cuisine to new heights. His spice mixes (either the commercial ones or from his cookbooks) are not a "thrown together" accident but are carefully crafted.

Of course, all of the traditional Cajun mamans that relied on salt and cayenne are probably turning in their graves.

[tryska]

Okay, my jambalaya turned out kind of flat.  Hmmm, will move over to the Jambalaya thread now.

Well, what I have found when gumbo, jambalaya or whatever comes out flat, the culprit is often salt. As in... not enough of it. Cajun cuisine can be pretty salty. They don't use a lot of different kinds of spices so you are pretty dependent on the salt component to bring out the flavors and bring it all together. I tend to add my salt in "layers". That means that, for jambalaya, I will salt the trinity when I am sauteing that. The raw meat will be preseasoned. Of course, the sausage is already seasoned. I use fairly rich stock so there is a little saltiness there. Then I taste the liquid before putting the lid on to cook the rice, allowing for the fact that the rice will be absorbing some of the salt and diluting it out.

Brooks... Am I wrong about that? I mean, you can only use so much cayenne.

i'm definitely going to give backup on this.

i made gumbo last saturday, for the first time. it was a seafood gumbo, and i used andouille, shrimp, clams and crabmeat. I didn't have nay seafood stock, and it was 3pm by the time i got my hungover self motivated, and really didn't feel like makign stock from scratch, so i picked up some clam "better than boullion" (did i spell that right?) from the store. The recipe i used also asked for creole seasoning - just happened to have some Tony Cachere's in the cupboard.

in any case, between the andouille, and the plugra i used for roux, and the incredibly salty broth that came from the better than bouillion and finally the creole seasoning, i was quite worried it was waaaay too salty. it tasted too salty to my tastebuds during the final simmer, so i added an extra couple quarts of water. and it still tasted too salty. until i let it thicken up and finally had it for dinner, and it was perfectly salted. not sure how that happenned other than the okra goo absorbing some of the salt, i'm not sure.

[Mayhaw Man]

Oh Salt, that wonderful spice on top of which Avery Island , the Home of Tabasco, sits.

I grew up eating food that most of you would call "soul food". My experience with the cooking of food that is more typical to South Louisiana began in a commercial kitchen (Mike Anderson's Seafood in Baton Rouge) and several other places around New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The person I learned the most from, however, was a guy named Buddy Fitzpatrick, who was my next door neighbor in Abita Springs and who also had worked with (for) Paul Prudhomme at COmmanders and then helped him to open up K-Pauls Kitchen on Chartres. Buddy later went up to Alaska during the pipeline boom and opened K-Pauls in Anchorage. This guy could cook. Everything. Well. He could bake, boil, broil, and roast. What I learned from him was that the salt- which he used much more heavily than had been my previous experience- was used not so much as a flavor in itself, but rather as an enhancement to the other flavors in the food.

Shrimp, Crabs, and Crawfish for example, just don't pick up the flavor of the Cayenne, garlic, and lemon in a boil without the salt. It's true. I have tried it the other way many times and am never satisfied with the results. He also (as do I) believed that the use of black and white pepper were just more "layers" and should be used in conjunction with the Chinese Red that he and Prudhomme preferred.

Another thing that I learned from him is to taste constantly. And don't taste it straight out of the pot, let it cool to a comfortable temp for a moment and then taste. You will be able to taste the full flavor of the food and not spend part of your concentration on avoiding burning your mouth.

All that being said, I don't use that much salt. I do use way more grlic than most people and that seems to make up a bit for the lack of salt. On the other hand, when boiling seafood (Crawfish Season is just getting cranked up, slowly) I use more than most of you can imagine, but it doesn't taste that way. The salt just enhances the flavor of the seafood and the other spices.

[Dave the Cook]

I may also try doing Dave's recipe of tomato cream sauce over linguine when I have people over.  Dave, do you put cajun spices into the sauce, or do you stick to the usual Italian herbs and spices like oregano and bay leaves?

Finally got around to posting the recipe here.

[Chad]

Friends over on Friday. I'll be doing Andouille in pufff pastry as an app. Should be pretty dang wonderful. Keep your fingers crossed.

Chad

[Okanagancook]

Made these andouille sausages using a mix of ingredients found in recipes from various sources. Used 'middle' size casing which were a little tricky to stuff. We had not used this size before and we tended to over fill them and had a few burst. All in all they turned out very, very well. Friends who have eaten a lot in New Orleans and used store bought garlic sausage for their homemade gumbo said the gumbo they made with these was the best they have every had...probably because we put tons of garlic in....home grown garlic which was nice and 'sticky'.

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