pettish painful: Balloon Juice ? Thursday Night Recipe Swap ? Mardi Gras (Gumbo!)

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Balloon Juice ? Thursday Night Recipe Swap ? Mardi Gras (Gumbo!)

by Anne Laurie

From our Food Goddess, TaMara:

I?m getting ready to travel again, so I?m swamped with getting everything done at work and home. But that doesn?t mean we can?t still celebrate Fat Tuesday with some New Orleans style food and drink. Bring on your party recipes. And next week let?s go vegetarian.

I wanted to do gumbo, but didn?t have time to recipe test anything this week, except a death-by-chocolate Texas Sheet Cake, and I find my own gumbo recipes lacking. Luckily when it comes to gumbo, JeffreyW runs circles around me. Here?s his take on a shrimp gumbo:

I was rummaging about in the big freezer and turned up a stick of Andouille sausage. That put me of a mind to make a pot of gumbo. I noticed that Alton Brown was touting a method of making a brown roux in the oven that seemed to be foolproof, and didn?t require one to stand over the stove stirring for a half hour and more:
Place the vegetable oil and flour into a 5 to 6-quart cast iron Dutch oven and whisk together to combine. Place on the middle shelf of the oven, uncovered, and bake for 1 1/2 hours, whisking 2 to 3 times throughout the cooking process.

Seemed to work pretty well:

This was after 90 minutes. It could have spent a little longer and been a bit more brown but I went with it as you see it. More or less following Alton?s recipe, I put it over a medium flame on the cooktop and stirred in diced celery, green peppers, and onion. The roux turned right away into thick mud but I kept stirring it until the veggies softened a bit, about ten minutes. Next was several cups (4-5?) of the stock the chicken I used was cooked in, fortified with some Creole seasoning, along with the canned tomato bits I used in lieu of fresh. I did have fresh thyme and even grow my own bay leaves now. That simmered for a half hour before I added the cooked chicken, thawed pre-cooked shrimp, and the sliced and browned Andouille sausage.

Serve over rice, and be sure to have a bottle of hot sauce on the table lest you be taunted.