Gumbo: Cook-Off 3

[patti]

I was wondering if you guys/gals in the US get good Cajun food outside Louisana ?  city far far away like NY or Chicago etc..........

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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

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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!

[hwilson41]

Looks really good hwilson!!!i used Aidells in mine and to be honest it was only just ok,not at all extraordinary like that looks,could you show a pic of the Tasso??thanks

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The tasso is pretty undistinguished in appearance. Just dark, smoked little chunks of ham about the size of a closed fist but not as thick. I haven't broken the vacuum seal yet, but if you like, I'll be glad to post a picture later today.

[hwilson41]

Re "cajun seasoning"  The "Gumbo Goddess" recipe above just says add your favorite, but i've never played with any, so what are some good mixes that aren't so hot they'll kill me?  (think 2 star in the Thai range)

I don't want my epitaph to read "gunned down by Gumbo"  but I do want it to taste good...

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This one from gumbo pages is pretty good. I particularly like that it has no salt in it, so you can control your own salt level. I use a little more cayenne than the recipe calls for, but you can play with that until you get one you like that won't gun you down .

[fifi]

Here is a link to Emeril's other stuff. clickety

I have come to prefer the Rustic Rub and that is what I keep on hand. I don't find Tony Chachere's brand all that hot.

[FistFullaRoux]

My gumbo report. First, sorry about the lack/quality of the pictures. My digital camera is MIA, so this was a cheap disposable camera. Fixed as best I could in Photoshop.

Last night, the forecast low for Birmingham was 24 degrees. Gumbo weather. As I said before, living with a heathen and having the flu makes for a difficult roux environment. So I had to cheat. I used Tony Chachere's Instant Roux. It worked, but I wanted a slightly darker roux. This was very good gumbo, however.

Two of the keys to a good gumbo. The trinity and the rice. The cup with the green things is half celery and half bell pepper. The white is onion. It's the easy way to make sure you have the 2:1:1 ratio right.

Here's the before and after on the vegetables. The before is the bottom half. Since I was using instant roux, I tried to render out a bit of fat from the andouille (which really should have been called smoked sausage, but it tasted OK), but got very little, not enough to really sweat the vegetables. So I added a couple tablespoons of butter.

Once they were "clear" as my grandmother would say, I deglazed the pan with chicken broth and added water to the level I wanted. Brought to a boil, added the chicken and added the instant roux until the color was right. Like this.

What you see in the above pic is the finished product with a little bit of green onions added at the last moment. Those green onions really did look flourescent againt the roux, but they darkened in just a few minutes. Heat was added in the form of Tabasco and a jalapeno pepper sauce I got for Christmas. Served over rice, it made the night a little warmer.

Unfortunately, the closeup pics that I took of the cooked down vegetables and the plating did not work. The onion, celery, and bell pepper were cooked down completely. They had no crunchiness whatsoever, and very little color.

It is the essence of the Cajun gumbo. Warm, cheap, comforting, and makes the place smell like home. Not a bad thing from a basic brown dish.

edited because I can't count.

Edited February 11, 2005 by FistFullaRoux (log)

[highchef]

FistfulloRoux said...Last night, the forecast low for Birmingham was 24 degrees. Gumbo weather. As I said before, living with a heathen and having the flu makes for a difficult roux environment. So I had to cheat. I used Tony Chachere's Instant Roux. It worked, but I wanted a slightly darker roux. This was very good gumbo, however.

I missed the heathen part, having been on the recieving end of that expression many times, I must confess to feeling a bit sorry for your roomie. The flu I can relate to. The feel-good gumbo feeling I can relate to as well. But I'm the one who cooks and i'm the one who's sick so no gumbo for me until I feel like standing on that cold tile floor. I use Savoies', and when I need some extra cajun kick I pull out the tabasco.

Cajun spice is really just cayanne pepper with onion, garlic and celery salt in there right?

Edited February 11, 2005 by highchef (log)

[Toliver]

The onion, celery, and bell pepper were cooked down completely. They had no crunchiness whatsoever, and very little color.

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So, in a proper gumbo, the trinity should still have some body to them when you sit down to eat? I would assume given the time it takes to make gumbo, they would be throroughly devoid of any guise of their former selves having done their duty for God and country.

[FistFullaRoux]

The onion, celery, and bell pepper were cooked down completely. They had no crunchiness whatsoever, and very little color.

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So, in a proper gumbo, the trinity should still have some body to them when you sit down to eat? I would assume given the time it takes to make gumbo, they would be throroughly devoid of any guise of their former selves having done their duty for God and country.

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With either kind of roux, or with okra, all vegetable matter should be unrecognizable in the final product. Just little bits of sweet that are slightly more solid than the liquid they float/sink in. Just my way of adding that if you can still tell that the trinity was ever in there texturewise, it needs to simmer some more.

edited to add - Or whatever floats your boat.

Edited February 11, 2005 by FistFullaRoux (log)

[fifi]

The onion, celery, and bell pepper were cooked down completely. They had no crunchiness whatsoever, and very little color.

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So, in a proper gumbo, the trinity should still have some body to them when you sit down to eat? I would assume given the time it takes to make gumbo, they would be throroughly devoid of any guise of their former selves having done their duty for God and country.

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This is another case of "it depends." In the ultradark chicken and sausage version, the trinity pretty much cooks away. Then there are "lighter" gumbos that may retain some vegginess. I made a really good one once. All I had was crabmeat, but a great lot of it. I made a peanut butter shade of roux. I cut the celery and onion a little larger than I usually do. (I did make a finer dice of the bell pepper, though because I don't like big chunks of that in my mouth. Also, I used red.) I made stock from the crab shells. I didn't saute the trinity very long in the roux and I didn't simmer long either before adding the crab. It was lovely.

[FistFullaRoux]

FistfulloRoux said...Last night, the forecast low for Birmingham was 24 degrees. Gumbo weather. As I said before, living with a heathen and having the flu makes for a difficult roux environment. So I had to cheat. I used Tony Chachere's Instant Roux. It worked, but I wanted a slightly darker roux. This was very good gumbo, however.

I missed the heathen part, having been on the recieving end of that expression many times, I must confess to feeling a bit sorry for your roomie. The flu I can relate to. The feel-good gumbo feeling I can relate to as well. But I'm the one who cooks and i'm the one who's sick so no gumbo for me until I feel like standing on that cold tile floor. I use Savoies', and when I need some extra cajun kick I pull out the tabasco.

Cajun spice is really just cayanne pepper with onion, garlic and celery salt in there right?

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Actually, very little garlic is used in traditional Cajun cooking. The garlic comes in as more of a Creole influence. It's New Orleans vs New Iberia.

As far as what people put in "Cajun seasoning", I have no idea. Many add sugar, they are too salty, and there's very little depth of flavor. The sauteed trinity plus hot pepper (in whatever amount you choose) plus the proper amount of salt is what they are trying to duplicate. It's hard to do that with something mass marketed that you can shake out of a can.

Cajun or Creole does not mean hot. It can, but it does not have to. Depth of flavor is the key, not something that makes your hair sweat. If you are comfortable with that level of heat, go for it. But it's up to the individual. I think that's why you don't often see hot peppers as a whole in a Cajun dish. Prepared pepper sauces or ground pepper, sure. But it's a lot harder to control whole peppers.

Edited to add that the heathen part references my wife's hatred of the smell of cooking roux. It does hang around for a while...

Edited February 11, 2005 by FistFullaRoux (log)

[Dim Sim]

He, he, he, thanks, everyone

Gorgeous Dim Sim, I'm glad you perservered with the pictures.

We polished off our leftovers last night and they did indeed taste delicious after melding for a few days.

No good cajun around here (North Eastern Wisconsin).  There used to be one spot with good stuff.  Unfortunately, the lead chef was a notorious drunk.  It did well for a while but it finally folded.  I was sad about it.  Good cajun food is a great thing to warm up a cold winter.

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we had a bit of cajun food craze here for a while in the mid 1980s, lots of restaurant were doing their blackened fish, nothing too adventurous, never know how authentic they were. Cusina, it's funny how you should mentioned about drunken chef, we had a restaurant here in Melbourne about 10 years ago, started off very promising, doing what they said was authentic Cajun food, they had hush puppy, gumbo, jambalaya, grits etc.........on the menu, the chef, I was told was a real McCoy from Louisiana, heard rumour that she was often found in the bar next door between shifts, a friend of mine was working in the kitchen at the time said she was drunk more often than sober.the restaurant didn't last very long, after a couple of months, it shut. Pity that, I would see myself as regular patron there.

[My Confusing Horoscope]

Y'all's pictures are mouthwatering!

How did the okry turn out? (they called it okry where I came from). Did you have to smother it a couple of hours to get rid of the sliminess before adding it?

I wish I had a digital camera and could show you what I meant by an okry gumbo in my earlier post. It's smothered down so much to the point that you see a lot of the seeds loose in the gumbo, and looks something like a lentil soup.

Keep up the good cooking!

[Mayhaw Man]

It's New Orleans vs New Iberia.

That would be a fight I would pay to see.

And as far as the vegetables go, I err on the side of alot of them, and how I chopthem depends on what I am making. Chicken and some kind of sausage? Chunky veg. Seafood? Fine chopped. Gumbo Z'herbes (which I am making in the morning for a friend who is preg and a bit anemic-lots of iron in all of those greens)? Hardly chopped.

[NulloModo]

So....

I have to say, that as good as my gumbo was the first day, it has been even better after sitting in the fridge a bit. Gumbo is truly a wonderful foodstuff. Anything that keeps getting better the longer you let it sit, and is so adaptable that you can use almost anything you have in the fridge to make it, gets my vote as a great thing to have under your culinary belt.

[Eden]

Ok so now I'm just confused by the whole smoked andouille thing.

I went to Whole Foods & asked specifically for "smoked andouille". The meat guy gave me a snotty toned "anything that's called andouille has to be smoked by definition" line, and it even mentions smoke in the ingredients list, but what I got is a raw sausage that still needs to be cooked!?! nothing like the pretty photos shown above.

I'm assuming "this is not the sausage you are looking for" but if it is please tell me...

If I'm right I'll just toss this stuff in the freezer to use as "mock chorizo" later on, and go visit a real sausage store in the morning...

[FistFullaRoux]

Ok so now I'm just confused by the whole smoked andouille thing. 

I went to Whole Foods & asked specifically for "smoked andouille".  The meat guy gave me a snotty toned "anything that's called andouille has to be smoked by definition" line, and it even mentions smoke in the ingredients list, but what I got is a raw sausage that still needs to be cooked!?! nothing like the pretty photos shown above. 

I'm assuming "this is not the sausage you are looking for" but if it is please tell me...

If I'm right I'll just toss this stuff in the freezer to use as "mock chorizo" later on, and go visit a real sausage store in the morning...

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Andouille is for all intents and purposes smoked sausage, but with bigger chunks of meat and slightly different seasoning. Smoked sausage will work just as well, and the lack of andouille should not be a hindrance to making gumbo. Whatever smoked sausage you can get your hands on will do just fine. I've even been known to make it with turkey smoked sausage for certain friends who have pork issues. It does make a less greasy product, reducing the amount of skimming time.

If you have any doubts, spend a couple of more dollars and get some plain old smoked sausage. It will be just fine. Don't let this be a roadblock

[torakris]

I love this thread!

I have learned so much, I really know nothing about cajun/creole/Louisiana foods and I have not even ever tasted gumbo/jambalaya/etc. I don't even know what crawfish (crayfish?) taste like..... I did have some blackened fish or chicken dish in South Carolina once....

My gumbo making is on the menu for Feb 20, I was going to mae it tomorrow but my husband called a couple hours ago and he has to work tomorrow so there will be no sausage making...

It works out better this way as I am making a trip to Costco on Thursday and I can pick up some celery there instead of paying $1.50 (158 yen) for 1 stalk! Not bunch, I single stalk, that is how they sell them at Japanese supermarkets....

[fifi]

. . . . .

I went to Whole Foods & asked specifically for "smoked andouille".  The meat guy gave me a snotty toned "anything that's called andouille has to be smoked by definition" line, and it even mentions smoke in the ingredients list, but what I got is a raw sausage that still needs to be cooked!?! nothing like the pretty photos shown above. 

I'm assuming "this is not the sausage you are looking for" but if it is please tell me...

. . . . .

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Thanks for my morning chuckle. My other two previous encounters with "fresh andouille" were perpetrated by Central Market, I think. Actually, no one is fessing up. You could always cook it and use it. Remember, gumbo is often about using what you have. Not all gumbos have smoked sausage.

[hwilson41]

Ok so now I'm just confused by the whole smoked andouille thing. 

I went to Whole Foods & asked specifically for "smoked andouille".  The meat guy gave me a snotty toned "anything that's called andouille has to be smoked by definition" line, and it even mentions smoke in the ingredients list, but what I got is a raw sausage that still needs to be cooked!?! nothing like the pretty photos shown above. 

If I'm right I'll just toss this stuff in the freezer to use as "mock chorizo" later on, and go visit a real sausage store in the morning...

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I'm anything but expert on this topic, but I can read an ingredients list with the best of them . Neither the andouille not the tasso that I received from Jacob's yesterday even list smoke as an ingredient, and both have quite obviously been smoked for quite a while. Your butcher is trying to BS his way through this by intimidation. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that the "smoke" he's talking about came from a bottle . It might be very good sausage, but it isn't smoked in the tradational sense of that word. As Fist and Fifi said though, that doesn't at all mean it wouldn't make a good gumbo.

[patti]

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.

[fifi]

Consider this an experience in developing a gumbo “recipe.” I will try to document my thought processes along the way. I started with Emeril’s recipe for seafood gumbo and went from there. I used Emeril’s recipe mainly for the proportions because I normally find those spot on. We shall see.

The other “new” thing that I am trying is adding petite diced tomato. I sometimes like a little tomato in a seafood gumbo. The other twist here is that I have drained the tomato really well and will dump it into the roux along with the trinity. I have no idea if this will make any difference. I dumped the can of diced tomato into the strainer, spread it out, and left it to drain while I went after some shrimp and crabmeat. I ended up using 1 cup of the tomato. It just looked right. Otherwise, that is 2 cups onion and 1 cup each celery and green pepper, dusted with 1 teaspoon cayenne and 2 teaspoons kosher salt.

The shopping adventure: Well, I couldn’t get near the seafood shops in Seabrook. Then I realized that it is the first Friday of Lent. Duh! So, I decamped from the traffic jam and headed for my local HEB. For grocery stores, the HEBs here are known to be one of the go-to places for seafood. After all, this time of year, shrimp from whatever source is previously frozen. They had some really nice looking medium tails. They also had crabmeat. I bought 2 pounds of tails (one pound to be reserved for etouffee tomorrow) and an 8 ounce tub of lump crabmeat (not jumbo, too pricey, the regular was bad enough) and an 8 ounce tub of claw meat. I like claw meat.

So, I arrive home and start to peel the shrimp. Now here is a revelation. Each shrimp is split across the top about halfway down. This essentially deveins the shrimp or at least makes it easy to get the vein out. I have never seen this. I normally buy shrimp during season at the seafood houses and they have nothing like this. I will say that it made peeling amazingly easy. You pinch the tail and that comes off. Then on the front of the shrimp, you pinch the legs and the rest of the shell comes off. This is almost painless shrimp peeling. And, no one hates to peel shrimp as much as I do. This has to have been done by machine. If so, whoever invented the shrimp splitter needs a reward, at the very least a turn as King Of Bacchus. (Try saying “shrimp splitter” three times real fast.)

I made some shrimp stock with the shrimp shells, the onion and celery trimmings and a couple of bay leaves. It was simmered very gently for about an hour. It smells heavenly. (That is really the shells from 2 pounds of shrimp tails. Remember, the other pound is for the etouffee tomorrow. I will also be saving some of the stock for that adventure.)

I am going to use Tony Chachere’s brand andouille because it might be more widely available. It is about the texture I look for in my andouille. The seasoning seems spot on, about middle of the road. It is not as smoky as some of my favorites but that might not be a bad thing for this recipe. This is a 14 ounce package.

I have made a deliberate decision to only go for a peanut butter roux, not the dark stuff.

As usual, I dumped in the trinity (quadity?), the sausage and a couple of bay leaves.

I added the shrimp broth and proceeded to burble for 2 hours. It took that long for the andouille and veggies to get to the texture I was after. Emeril’s original recipe called for 8 cups of liquid for ¾ cup each flour and oil. I made the stock with 8 cups of water and robbed a cup for the etouffee. As I added and stirred, I quit at 6 cups. I was afraid that 7 cups would be too thin. I am allowing for the fact that a lighter roux would have more thickening power so I decided to just wait and see and adjust if needed. I left it at 6 cups.

Tasting about half way through the burbling, something is missing. I remember researching the Brennan’s turtle soup recipe. Some of the magic of that Creole heaven is the combo of tomato and Worcestershire. I added the magic sauce, tasting as I went. Three tablespoons . . . Bingo!

I added the pound of shrimp and pound of crabmeat and heated to just cook the shrimp. The crabmeat was well warmed by then. I did get some oil break out and skimmed that off. That phenomenon is one of those things I don’t understand. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. I recall one batch of chicken and sausage gumbo where I got almost the whole cup of oil back.

Voila! We have gumbo mes amis.

What would I do differently? I am not sure that draining the tomatoes and adding with the trinity did very much. Also, to get that one cup of drained tomato, I threw out about a quarter cup of tomato and the juice. I think I would just dump in the whole can, juice and all, just prior to adding the stock. I might even cut the stock back to 5 cups, maybe 4. I do think the roux color is spot on for this style. I wouldn’t change that.

But, all in all, this is one of the best gumbos I have made . . . ever.

[patti]

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

[highchef]

a lovely gumbo, hope you made enough to freeze!

[hwilson41]

Beautiful, beautiful gumbo Fifi. A treat for the eyes and no doubt for the taste buds too . I doubt you'd get that much shrimp or sausage from a restaurant version.

A couple of question just because I'm still learning what the hell I'm doing. How much liquid did you lose during the 2 hour simmering? I.e., was the sauce fairly thick at the end?

Did andouille seem to overpower the flavor of the shrimp and crab? I'm tempted to try another seafood gumbo pretty soon, and the Jacob's andouille is pretty damned smoky.

Thanks for the help, and thanks for the great post with all those pictures and details.

[Dim Sim]

wow ! That looks beautiful, I am sure it tasted delicious, I have never made seafood gumbo before, I should try it next time, The only problem is that it gets terribly expensive here, we can't get pieces of crab meat here, we have to get a crab to cook and pick, and if I can afford a crayfish, it will be too wasteful to put in gumbo. they normally sell for about A$45 to 50 a kg or in American terms; about $16 per lb. a couple of quick questions, when adding the tomato with the trinity (or quadity)then cook it for 2 hours, wouldn't the tomato disintergrade into the sauce, and not have any texture left ? and the adding of tomato and worscheshire , I take it you mean tomato ketchup.

I use about the same amount of liguid for the same amount of roux too. about 3/4 cup each of oil and flour for 2 Quarts of stock. did you find much difference in thickening strength when you take the roux to peanut butter colour then let say dark chocolate ? come to think of it I might post my recipe in this post and open it to scrutiny .