Thursday, December 22, 2005
gumbo
with the sausage out of the way, tonight was a night for gumbo. And in the spirit of Jason's apple tart cook-along, here's a quick lowdown on how it went. From left to right we have: beer, veggies, AP flour, chicken pieces overnighted in seasoned buttermilk, baggie of seasoned flour, floured chicken ready to fry, stock pot with chicken broth in it, cast iron fry pan with 1/4" of oil in it for frying.
There are 4 basic steps along the way to gumbo land:
-fry the chicken
-make the roux
-cook veggies in roux
-assemble gumbo
My most favorite part of this exercise is the roux. Just making it is cool because of the dirt simple ingredients of oil and flour. But together with some heat added, it's a whole complex animal. It's great fun to watch the roux slowly darken as you continually whisk it. I tried to photograph the stages of the different colors but it didn't come out. Maybe it's all for the best as I wouldn't want to diminish the joy of watching the process yourself for the first time. And by the way, I do mean continually whisk. This isn't like risotto where you read/hear that you must continually stir it or else, but once you've done it you realize that paying such detailed attention to the dish would be overly conservative and wasteful of time that can quite safely be spent cooking the rest of dinner. Oh no. You must keep this stuff moving or else you will burn the flour and taint the roux and thus have fatally wounded the heart of your gumbo. So have a beer (I enjoyed 3 through the course of the evening) and focus all your love and attention on the roux. It will repay you in spades.
The best part about the roux is once it's darkened to a deep red/brown it's time to add the veggies. Again very plain components: onion, celery and green pepper. Adding this into the roux is the single coolest cooking...meneuver that I have personal experience with. For me this is on par with the magic of taking sausages out of the smoker, but better because you can see/hear/smell the magic happening right in front of you. In making the roux, it sputters a bit as you first work in the flour but for most of the time it is essentially inert. Just slowly changing colors and giving off the lovely nutty/burnt popcorn aroma. You just keep stirring until it's as dark as you want it. Upon adding the vegetables, the whole pan springs to life, bubbling and sputtering wildly as the water from the greens evaporates and escapes as steam. In an instant your cast iron transitions from boring dark pan to furious cauldron. What's really cool is that you always take the roux just to the limit of the color you want but invariably once you add the veggies, it goes a full shade darker. For me this means a clear jump from deep red/brown to a sinister black, which looks and behaves just like the evil goo from Creepshow 2. And the smell! There's nothing like it to compare with. In the vein of when you start a sauce with just onions and garlic and are amazed for the umpteenth time of how good it smells. But more intense than that. It is truly the concentrated essence of the wonderful gumbo that will soon be born.
Once the veggies are cooked for a bit you are home free. Work the veggie/roux into the boiling stock in batches, add the fried chicken and sausage and let cook for a few hours. When you are ready, remove the chicken, discard skin and bones, shred the meat and return this to the pot. This batch will sit for 48 hours before serving but that isn't necessary although it does benefit from a little age.
And I guess I forgot the very important 5th step to gumbo
-clean up
Happy late December everybody!
with the sausage out of the way, tonight was a night for gumbo. And in the spirit of Jason's apple tart cook-along, here's a quick lowdown on how it went. From left to right we have: beer, veggies, AP flour, chicken pieces overnighted in seasoned buttermilk, baggie of seasoned flour, floured chicken ready to fry, stock pot with chicken broth in it, cast iron fry pan with 1/4" of oil in it for frying.
There are 4 basic steps along the way to gumbo land:
-fry the chicken
-make the roux
-cook veggies in roux
-assemble gumbo
My most favorite part of this exercise is the roux. Just making it is cool because of the dirt simple ingredients of oil and flour. But together with some heat added, it's a whole complex animal. It's great fun to watch the roux slowly darken as you continually whisk it. I tried to photograph the stages of the different colors but it didn't come out. Maybe it's all for the best as I wouldn't want to diminish the joy of watching the process yourself for the first time. And by the way, I do mean continually whisk. This isn't like risotto where you read/hear that you must continually stir it or else, but once you've done it you realize that paying such detailed attention to the dish would be overly conservative and wasteful of time that can quite safely be spent cooking the rest of dinner. Oh no. You must keep this stuff moving or else you will burn the flour and taint the roux and thus have fatally wounded the heart of your gumbo. So have a beer (I enjoyed 3 through the course of the evening) and focus all your love and attention on the roux. It will repay you in spades.
The best part about the roux is once it's darkened to a deep red/brown it's time to add the veggies. Again very plain components: onion, celery and green pepper. Adding this into the roux is the single coolest cooking...meneuver that I have personal experience with. For me this is on par with the magic of taking sausages out of the smoker, but better because you can see/hear/smell the magic happening right in front of you. In making the roux, it sputters a bit as you first work in the flour but for most of the time it is essentially inert. Just slowly changing colors and giving off the lovely nutty/burnt popcorn aroma. You just keep stirring until it's as dark as you want it. Upon adding the vegetables, the whole pan springs to life, bubbling and sputtering wildly as the water from the greens evaporates and escapes as steam. In an instant your cast iron transitions from boring dark pan to furious cauldron. What's really cool is that you always take the roux just to the limit of the color you want but invariably once you add the veggies, it goes a full shade darker. For me this means a clear jump from deep red/brown to a sinister black, which looks and behaves just like the evil goo from Creepshow 2. And the smell! There's nothing like it to compare with. In the vein of when you start a sauce with just onions and garlic and are amazed for the umpteenth time of how good it smells. But more intense than that. It is truly the concentrated essence of the wonderful gumbo that will soon be born.
Once the veggies are cooked for a bit you are home free. Work the veggie/roux into the boiling stock in batches, add the fried chicken and sausage and let cook for a few hours. When you are ready, remove the chicken, discard skin and bones, shred the meat and return this to the pot. This batch will sit for 48 hours before serving but that isn't necessary although it does benefit from a little age.
And I guess I forgot the very important 5th step to gumbo
-clean up
Happy late December everybody!
