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Bertram31.com General Bulletin Board
Let's cook something
Posted By: Vic Roy
Date: Wednesday, 1 December 2004, at 8:02 p.m.
Chiles reminded me we need to do some cooking.
Let's make Coonass seafood gumbo for the holidays. Yep, first you make a roux, unless you can find some of the already-made-up roux by Savoie in the glass jar. I'm assuming you can't, so let's do it from scratch.
Take a cast iron dutch oven and pour just enough Pompian extra virgin olive oil in to cover the bottom. A roux is flour browned in oil. Slowly heat the oil in the dutch oven and sprinkle in some general purpose flour, and as the oil starts to get hot (take it slow, rookies) take a spatula and stir it constantly. Keep putting flour in until the consistency is about that of heavy cream, but you gotta stir all the time. Keep browning the flour in the olive oil - now here is the Gospel - until it turns the color of dark peanut butter and once you experience the smell, you will never forget it when it's just right. If you go over the line and burn the roux, just throw it out and start over.
Now once the roux is ready, it's time to put the veggies in, which you have already cut up and have ready, becsuse this is a matter of seconds when the roux is just right. Chop up some yellow onions (white onions will do, but yellow is better) pretty fine, ok to use a food processor, a lot of onions, say 3 cups. Then do some fresh garlic - a lot, can't use too much, use the side of the knife to crush it and makes it real easy to peel, then chop up some celery fine. Have all this ready to go when the roux gets just right. At The Moment of Truth when the roux is done, dump all the veggies in the pot and saute' them in the roux, continuing to stir constantly for about 15 minutes until the onions start to turn clear. Keep the heat low as if you burn the veggies you have to start over.
Once the veggies are done, then put some stock in the pot and you are out of the woods on burning stuff. I use shrimp stock, just boil the heads and shells of shrimp when we boil them, that stock will freeze for a year easy. Fish carcasses will boil up a good stock too. If you don't have stock, plain water will do. DO NOT put any seasoning in the gumbo, as the ingrediments do that.
So after you put the water/stock in, bring the gumbo up to a very slow boil, and add a couple of smoked turkey legs - if not available, use smoked chicken quarters, or if no smoked stuff around, just use chicken fryer legs. Goal is to boil the meat off the bones. Then get some good smoked sausage, cut it in thin circles like half dollars, and saute' it in a skillet, brown it and cook most of the fat out of it, let it sit on a paper towel to drain further, then throw it in the gumbo.
Let the gumbo simmer for about 2-3 hours and now and then skim the grease off the top with a big spoon. As the meat cooks off the bones of the poultry, fish the bones out.
Peel raw a couple of pounds of shrimp (save the heads and shells for your stock boil later) and put them in the gumbo about 10 minutes before you are ready to serve it. Oysters the same.
Serve over white rice. Again, do not put any seasoning in the gumbo, let your guests season it at the table.
UV
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