Big Easy eating

So heres another first for me...Gumbo. I have always been intrigued by this dish- but ive never prepared or eaten it. Of course, I am used to stews and soups, and figured that gumbo would be very similar in flavor. WRONG! Gumbo is a kind of soup/stew/thing, but the preparation is a bit different and it includeds one thing that I never find myself using in a soup-Roux.
Those of you who cook know this is the base to most things saucy and delicious, and well, French. Since Gumbo is from New Orleans, which is crawling with French decendants, it makes sense that the first step to this dish is roux. A roux (pronounced rew) is just butter and flour whisked and cooked in a sautee pan. The level of darkness and cooking time will establish the major color and flavor of the sauce or dish in which it is being used. Its a really amazing thing to me, and its amazingly delicious.

Ingredients: andouille sausage, uncooked peeled shrimp, lamb riblets or duck breasts (i used lamb, its cheaper), butter, flour, vegetable oil, celery, onions, green bell pepper, garlic, salt, tomato paste, tomato puree, plum tomatoes (lots of these plump red beauties going on)and a quarter cup of white wine. To expand this dish (I was feeding 4 grown boys) I served it over rice. I used the boil-in-bag brown rice because I have found out that I am really not good at cooking rice. Its that whole correct proportion, paying attention thing that really throws me off.

This dish involved, yet again, lots of multi tasking and chopping on my part. All of my burners were going and I had a lot of dishes to do. But it smelled amazing and it was lots of fun to prepare!  First-I whisked a few tablespoons of butter and a quarter cup of flour together in a sautee pan and let it get a nice brown color, which took about 15 minutes. You have to make sure and whisk the roux at frequent intervals to keep it from separating or getting clumpy. Clumpy=bad! While the roux was browning, I chopped onion, celery, green bell pepper, and garlic and set it to sautee in another pan with a turn of EVOO. I was supposed to use veggie oil but im a firm believer in the olive. Its yummy, and the omega 3's arent a bad side effect. While both of those sautee pans were going, I got out my big pasta pot, and poured in a whole quart of chicken broth and set it to simmer. Once the broth is simmering, add the browned roux and whisk in completely.
...beer break....
Once the veggies were nice and soft, I added a tablespoon of tomato paste and a half a cup of tomato puree. Cook this mixture until the color is a deep red brown, and the tomato starts to stick to the bottom of the pan.
While the veggies are cooking, chop the adouille sausage and set it to cook in a sautee pan with a turn of EVOO. The recipe calls to deglaze the veggitables with white wine, which I had on hand, but I used Stone Smoked Porter instead. A really smoky beer can be a great addition to any red meat stew, I use this often in cooking, its also a great marinade! So I started drinking the Smoked Porter, I mean, deglazing the pan with the smoked porter and I let this simmer for about two minutes and then added it to the broth-roux mixture.
Once the sausage is cooked through, remove while reserving the fat, and leave the pan on the heat! Season the duck or lamb with salt and pepper and cook in the fat from the sausage. I really enjoy both lamb and duck, but the sweet, fatty, gamey taste is SO DIFFERENT than what im used to working with, I had to adjust to smelling and then eating this unique flavor. Once the lamb was nice and browned on all sides, I removed it from the pan and cut into bit size cubes. In ANOTHER friggen pan, I dry seared the shrimp then added all three meats to the Gumbo. Then I improvised a bit and added red pepper flakes, ceyenne pepper, and chilli powder (do these people really expect me to use ONLY salt? ) and let simmer for about 20 mins.

^^^Really good recipe!!!!!^^^^ I truly enjoyed cooking this dish. Chris and I had my brothers over and one of their friends who is a fan of New Orleans and creole cooking. He complimented the dish and said it tasted right on to big easy standards.