patti

My mother's roux was thick like that. I wish she were alive so I could ask her about it.

My mom and grandmothers were all decent cooks, so no horror stories there (that I can currently recall), but I do have a bad memory of something made by a babysitter. She decided to make us what she said was supposed to be cake without frosting, but turned out to be a vile green horror. She used green food coloring on something that resembled cornbread but tasted like nothing I've ever tasted before or since. I'm pretty sure I threw up, and Mom never hired her as a babysitter again.

Your gumbo looks absolutely perfect! Impressive first pot.

Sure, the basis for Cajun cooking is to use what you have on hand, but it doesn't mean it all has to be turned into gumbo!

No! No! A thousand times no! <runs screaming into the night> (But yes to jarred roux.)

John Folse's frozen soups can be quite nice. I usually doctor them up by adding more shrimp (to the shrimp and asparagus soup) or crabmeat (to the crawfish and potato soup). They're good on their own, but sometimes I like to fiddle.

Happy Valentine's Day to me! My Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine arrived today. I've only given it a brief perusal, but it looks fabulous. Can't wait to dig into all of its juicy goodness.

Woohoo! Add 1 more for me. My autographed copy of John Folse's Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine arrived today. Boy, is it ever purty.

I've heard of guinea (hen, not pig) gumbo, blackbird (!), rabbit, dove, quail, duck, venison, and almost anything but cow and pig, except as smoked sausage. My husband and son are not adventurous, so my gumbos are pretty tame.

Smithy, it looks like mighty good gumbo to me, and I'd bet that something like this can be found at a few hunting camps around south Louisiana.

Seafood gumbo with shrimp, crab fingers, and oysters. No pictures of the mis en place or roux making as this gumbo came from the freezer, except for freshly added seafood. There were six measly oysters in the whole pot of gumbo because that's all that was available in the store! (Edited to change crab claws to crab fingers. I wasn't thinking.)

Did it taste as good as it looks? That picture is making me hungry!

I recall being repulsed by the shredded carrot with raisins salad served in the school cafeteria. I never even gave it a chance because it looked so bad. However, I adore broccoli salad with raisins and bacon (and red onion) as an adult, so I'm thinking maybe carrots and raisins probably aren't so bad. Still haven't tasted it yet, though. And Sister Delia can't make me!

Steven, will it be a no-no to have one pot that is larger than the others? My only piece of Le Creuset is 7.25 quarts, while the non-stick Calphalon saucier and the Magnalite dutch oven are 5 quarts, and the Corning Ware is 5 liter (I also have 3 liter, if that would be better). Also (and this one might belong in the stupid questions thread in the other forums) I made stock per the eGCI instructions, but I'm not sure about the proper amount to use. I started off in a 22 quart pot with 11 pounds of chicken and bones (later transferred to a 16 quart pot), and after the reduction, ended up with 4 quarts of stock. In what proportion should I use it?

It's beautiful, Fifi! C'est bon!

I have some vague memory of my mother and father having a heated discussion about smoked sausage vs. fresh sausage in gumbo. Mom didn't grow up with Cajun cooking and she was more willing to break the rules, so to speak, and used fresh sausage a time or two. My father considered it heresy. I just remember eating it and liking it. It's all good.

I'd say amooz boosh, but I could be wrong. And then there's the fact that I've never said it out loud.

Beautiful, beautiful job on the gumbo Dim Sim . Re getting real Cajun or Nawlins food outside Louisiana, I'm an expat Texan and now live about 20 miles outside DC, and you can buy just about anything you can pay for around here, probably second only to NYC area. There is a lot of stuff being sold that is called andouille, but it doesn't resemble very closely the sausage I get from Jacob's in LaPlace. Some of it isn't even smoked, and I doubt the folks making it ever tasted the real thing. Brooks put me on to Jacob's, and it is very, very good, and very coarsely ground. I have a shipment of andouille and tasso due in from them today, and I'm going to post a picture of the andouille uncased to answer a question that came up earlier in this thread. So I guess the short answer is "no", at least not around here. I'm guessing you probably can get the real thing in NYC, but don't really know. Again, great job on the gumbo (but I'll leave the happy dance to Fifi ). THW ← Eighteen (or so) years ago, my parents moved from Louisiana to Washington state at about the same time Paul Prudhomme was making Cajun food renowned and restaurants were trying to cash in on the Cajun craze. One restaurant claimed to have "authentic" Cajun boudin, and my father wanted to try some. The owner stopped by to talk to him, bragging about how good his boudin was, even better than Cajun, because Cajuns used a lot of rice as filler. Needless to say, my father "filled" him in on just how authentic his boudin was. The picture I first used as an avatar here was a picture of my father taking a bite from a steaming platter of boiled crawfish, with a look of sublime happiness on his face. A friend had told him of a place in Oregon where he could get live crawfish and he was having his first taste of them. The crawfish are a different variety than you get in Louisiana, but they certainly did the trick for a man who was missing his home and the food he grew up on. DimSim, your gumbo looks awesome!

Here's a helpful site: Audio Guide to French Culinary Terms I only wish it were more comprehensive.

Fist, that's my opinion, too, that tomatoes are more of a Creole tradition than a Cajun tradition, with the exception of shrimp and okra gumbo. Do you have tomatoes in that one?

Lately, leftover meats like chicken, pork tenderloin, and even roast beef have been made into a Thai curry. The roast beef was the least successful, in my opinion. Meatloaf leftovers make scrumptious sandwiches.

Is shrimp mold one of the jellied salads? Shrimp mold is so delicious, but what a crappy name. I've been given strange looks by non-locals when they hear that I'm bringing shrimp mold to the potluck.

I ordered from Folse's site, too. $49.95 for the book, $15 for shipping, $4.25 for sales tax (since it's in state) for a total of $69.20. Yikes, I don't like seeing that in print. Are you sure you only ordered 2? The first go round it showed that I was ordering 2, when I was only ordering 1, so I had to empty the shopping cart and start over.

My first cookbook was a wedding gift and it was Talk About Good, which is a Lafayette Junior League cookbook. I received River Roads Recipes (Baton Rouge Junior League) shortly thereafter, and these two were my most used books for years, as you would easily be able to tell by the condition they're in. I also like Talk About Good II. New Iberia's Shadows On the Teche is good, and I agree with Brooks about Cotton Country. I don't currently own a copy because I gifted someone else with it, but I'll have to do something about that soon. I absolutely adore reading Marcelle Bienvenu's food and cooking columns, but if you can believe it, I don't own a single one of her cookbooks. Damn, I need to remedy that, too. Last night I ordered John Folse's Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine and I can't wait to get it (although I should've, since Barnes & Noble said they'd have it next week and shipping was $15). A treasured cookbook is one I found at a garage sale for fifty cents. It's a cookbook put out in 1955 by a museum association in the town I grew up in. I never knew of its existence while growing up, and it's fun to peruse, seeing familiar names I'd known all of my life. Here's what it looks like: (Heh, seeing the original price, I realize I didn't get such a good bargain. )

Thank you, ladies, your opinions mean a lot to me. I think one of the problems with the Chinese crawfish is that they wash off all of the fat which renders the crawfish almost flavorless. The Louisiana folks know better. I forgot to say I added a few good dashes of Tabasco sauce, too.