Tasty creations in the kitchen require bold strokes, an old wooden spoon, and sampling your dishes often.
Louisiana: Cajun and Creole Recipes
Recipes Coming Soon: Red Beans and Rice, and Crawfish Etoufee
(Note: I imagine every family has their own way of making traditional Cajun and Creole dishes, and there is certainly no single way to prepare a dish. I have included these recipes to provide a reference point and encourage you to play with my recipes until you are satisfied with your results. At any rate, my family is from South Louisiana and this is basically how we normally prepare these dishes.
email me: schuyler_porche@yahoo.com
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Roux: A good roux is the foundation of many popular Louisiana dishes, and producing a good roux is often the difference between memorable meals and infamous meals. Many books recommend an equal portion of flour and oil, but I find this leads to an oil slick forming on the surface of my gumbo.
To make a roux that is sure to please:
Use 1 and 1/4 parts flour and 1 part vegetable oil or lard. (I find butter burns too easily for this process.) 1 and 1/4 cups of flour and 1 cup of oil make sufficient Roux for a gumbo that serves approximately 10 large bowls.
Using a heavy pot (preferably cast iron) heat the oil under a medium to medium high fire.
Once the oil or lard is hot, using a wooden spoon slowly mix in the flour with the oil so as to avoid lumps forming in the mixture.
At this point it is essential to avoid burning the Roux while at the same time avoid burning yourself. Stir constantly under a medium fire until a deep muddy reddish-brown color and smooth consistency has been achieved. This should take approximately 30 minutes. Temperature can be adjusted to avoid burning or to speed the process up, but be careful of burning the roux. If you develop black specks in the Roux, it is probably burned and the process must start over from scratch.
Additionally, Roux can be made in advance and refrigerated or frozen for future use.
Gumbo: This thick heavy soup with roux as a base is served hot in a bowl with a healthy portion of rice. Gumbo is eaten as both a soup course in a meal, or as the main dish of a meal. Normally, a gumbo involves a combination of two or more types of meat or seafood. Typical, gumbos include: Chicken and Pork Sausage; Turkey necks and Pork sausage; Duck and Sausage; Venison and Duck; Seafood Gumbo: Crawfish, Crab, Shrimp, Fish or Oysters (Normally, Shrimp and Crawfish would not be in the same gumbo.) Spicy pork sausage often finds a place in gumbo. Additionally, I often hear people suggest that if okra is added a roux is not necessary for gumbo, but I can always taste the difference. My gumbo always starts with a dark brown roux.
Chicken and Sausage Gumbo
Ingredients: (normally serves 5 to 6 people)
Preparation: If starting from scratch, I recommend beginning by preparing the chicken. Clean the chicken, then season it to personal taste. Cover the chicken and then bake it. I like to bake a covered chicken at approximately 450 degrees for about an hour because it creates a large quantity of juice which will be used in the gumbo later. After the Chicken is cooked cut the legs, thighs, and wings off; these will be placed whole in the gumbo. Slice the breast into large pieces, and remove the remaining meat from the rest of the Chicken.
Melt two or three pats of butter in the Gumbo Pot. Slice the sausage in pieces, which are not particularly thick or thin, and brown the sausage in the large pot being used for the gumbo. Next, add the chopped onions, and allow the sausage and onion to sauté in a covered pot under a medium fire until the onions have begun to clear. Now add the chopped celery, minced garlic, chopped bell pepper, and okra. Allow this combination to cook for approximately 10 minutes with the pot covered.
Next, add the chicken meat, legs, wings, and thighs to the pot; and mix everything together. Also, add some salt, cayenne and black pepper. Then, add the roux and mix the whole thing together. Now, with the pot covered allow the mixture to blend together for a few minutes under a low fire.
Then, add the juice produced from baking the chicken (or a large quantity of stock) to the gumbo. Add the two bay leaves as well. The more chicken juice or stock the better. Now add water to pot until it is about 80% to 85% full. Place the fire on high and mix the gumbo together. At this point I normally season the gumbo again with salt, pepper, Tabasco or whatever spices or herbs you like. Bring the pot to a boil for approximately ten minutes, turn the fire down, cover, and let it cook for at least 45 minutes. The longer the better. Just before covering the pot I normally sprinkle a little parsley or chopped green onions on top the gumbo.
Gumbo is normally served in a bowl with a large spoonful of rice, and some filé (ground sassafras) sprinkled on top. A Large hunk of warm buttered French bread is nice on the side as well.
Jambalaya: Is a spicy rice dish in which uncooked rice is mixed with a prepared combination of meat and vegetables, then the whole mixture is cooked together to create a tasty one pot meal.
Ingredients: (normally serves 5 to 6 people)
1 whole 4 1/2 lb. chicken
3/4 lb. sausage (spicy pork sausage is preferable)
1 1/2 cups of rice
3 stalks of chopped celery
3 toes of minced garlic
2 chopped medium sized onions
1/2 a bell pepper chopped
salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, Tabasco Sauce
1 Bay leaf
1 5-quart pot
Preparation: The chicken needs to be cooked before you begin making the jambalaya, and I like to marinate the chicken then bake it so that I have lots of juice to add to the jambalaya. However, how you prepare the chicken does not matter as long as the chicken is well seasoned and full of flavor. The chicken could be first cooked in the same pot the dish will be prepared in, it could be smoked, or even left over from a previous meal. Whatever the method, I normally use the meat from both breasts, both thighs, wings and the back meat which should leave the legs for another time.
First, slice the sausage, and allow it to brown for a few minutes under a medium-high fire. Then, add the chopped onions and let the combination sauté until the onions clear. Under a high fire add the chopped bell pepper, minced garlic, chopped celery, and hunks of chicken meat. Season the mixture, cover the pot and allow it to cook under a medium to low-medium fire for about 10 minutes. Generally, I taste the dish at this point to gain a sense of how spicy it is. Remember, the rice is going to absorb much of the seasoning so you will probably have to experiment a few times before you are happy with the intensity of the flavor.
Now, add the rice and bay leaves, and under a medium to medium high fire stir the pot so the rice is spread evenly throughout the entire mixture. Assuming the dish is not burning, let this process continue for ten minutes. This allows the rice to absorb the flavor of the dish.
Next, add the juice left over from baking the chicken, or add chicken stock. Keep in mind that this is what is going to cook the rice so you do not need to add a specific amount of stock or water, but the more stock the better. What you need to do is to fill the pot with enough liquid (stock and water) so an inch and half to two inches of liquid are covering the top of the rice, meat, and vegetable combination.
Add some salt and other seasonings and bring the pot to a boil for several minutes. Then, lower the fire and cover the pot and in 30 to 40 minutes your jambalaya should be ready.
(remember- you don't eat the bay leaves.)
email me: schuyler_porche@yahoo.com
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