Gumbo
Jacob and I had big plans to go to Mardi Gras this
year. It was an impetuous last minute idea – we were going to pile in the
car after work on a Friday night, drive straight through until we got to New
Orleans, enjoy the festivities for a couple of days and then head home loaded
with beads. Unfortunately, it didn’t pan out. Too much driving, too
expensive, too blah blah blah... Instead, while the party raged on in
Louisiana, we made a small attempt to bring some southern flavor home.
This was to be my first foray into
Creole cooking. I poked around in some cookbooks and websites to find a good
recipe for the evening. There was loads of rice, peppers, okra, sausage, crabs,
crawfish, oysters and shrimp; plenty of hot spices and French herbs; and a
sinful amount of butter, which brings me to the subject of roux. A huge number
of Creole dishes begin with a roux, equal parts of fat and flour melted together
to create a thickening agent. I am familiar with roux as a foundation for some
sauces, but in Creole recipes, roux is IT. It is so ubiquitous that a common
saying in New Orleans is, “First you make a roux...”
Today (sadly, one day too late) I looked
into roux. There are three basic types: light (or what the Cajuns call blond),
medium (or peanut butter colored), and dark (which gets as dark as bittersweet
chocolate). There is white roux also, which is cooked for just a minute to get
the flour taste out, but this is rarely used in Louisiana cooking. The darker
the roux, the more flavor and less thickening power you get. Dark roux has a
roasted nutty flavor that is both much sought-after and the most difficult to
achieve. The longer roux cooks, the easier it is to burn: if you see dark
flecks, you have burned it and you should start over. You also have to take it
off the heat slightly before it gets to the color you want, because the residual
heat in the pan will continue to cook the roux. This is why it’s a good
idea to add your “trinity” (onion, celery, bell pepper) to the roux
before it gets to your desired color - it will help slow the cooking process.
You should also know that there is a certain amount of danger in making roux.
Beware the hot splatter – they don’t call it Creole napalm for
nothing.
I have made many a roux in my
day, but I am ashamed to admit that I really don’t know what it is
supposed to look like. I seem to come up with a different consistency every
time, and often end up with a dry cookie-dough type substance that is a far cry
from something that will bubble and foam. After having spent some time looking
into it today, I think I may have found the problem – I tend to dump the
flour into the melted butter. Most of the recipes I consulted recommend
sprinkling it in bit by bit while whisking constantly. I also store my flour in
the freezer – the temperature may be part of the problem. Then there are
the fatal mistakes like the one I made last
night.
I decided to make gumbo, so I
started with a roux. I melted two sticks of butter in a saucepan and dumped in
two cups of flour. I stirred it into the inevitable crumbly mess and kept
stirring it, worryingly, hopefully. It burned. Not ready to admit defeat, I
carefully scraped the burned part off the bottom and added some more butter to
try to moisten it. That helped, but only a bit. I started adding some
simmering stock (even though the roux hadn’t darkened enough) because I
couldn’t imagine how I was supposed to soften my “trinity” in
something that looked like cookie-dough! The stock definitely helped, but I had
to add all of it just to get a liquid consistency going. Even then it appeared
to be grainy.
Does that seem odd? Has
anyone noticed the great error yet? I sure didn’t until it was way too
late. You see, the recipe was wrong! Roux is equal parts flour and butter.
Equal Parts!!! Yet I put two cups of flour into two sticks – one cup
– of butter. My gumbo was
doomed.
At this point, after about 45
minutes, the roux (if you can call it that) was peanut butter colored, and
though I suspected disaster, I chose to pretend that everything was fine. Very
soon, I realized that my saucepan was not going to be big enough and graduated
to a stock pot. I had used up all the stock to make the roux more roux-like, so
I added several cups of water, and stirred in the onion, celery and red pepper.
After it had reached a boil, I added the spices (chili, paprika, bay, oregano,
red pepper, black pepper and thyme), garlic and more water. Still very thick.
I added another few cups of water. I tasted it, and it was actually quite yummy
though there was a strong undercurrent of flour. I upped the heat with some
more pepper and chili powder, and let Jacob taste. “Thick,” he
said, “but tasty.”
Thick, yes. I added still another few cups of
water. I also drank about half of my first hurricane – a mixture of
passion fruit juice, lime juice and amber rum – which Jacob had blended up
for the occasion. Then I turned back to the
gumbo.
An odd skin was forming on the
top. I got excited – could this be the floury scum that you are supposed
to skim? I skimmed, and kept skimming for about twenty-five minutes. The gumbo
slowly improved. It tasted less and less floury, and I felt a flicker of hope.
I added the hot sausages and shrimp, but they disappeared in the vastness of the
pot: what with my scrambling to add moisture, my gumbo for two had turned into
gumbo for ten. I added a pound of kielbasa with some more water and resigned
myself to my fate.
We ate gumbo stew
over white rice. For all my efforts, it never got thinner than stew.
Truthfully, it was quite good as thick as it was. The flavors were bright, it
left a little burn on the lips, and the shrimp popped in your mouth. It may
have been a bit more filling than it should have been, but we both enjoyed our
sad little attempt at Mardi Gras dining. The hurricanes
helped.
In retrospect, I don’t
think any amount of liquid would have totally salvaged my roux-full mistake. In
the morning the leftovers looked like a cracked desert floor – the flour
must have kept sucking up moisture all night. Just for kicks, I looked up what
the proper proportions for roux should be: 1 cup roux to 3 gallons of liquid.
I’m pretty sure I succeeded in flipping that ratio. C’est la vie,
or as they would say in New Orleans, don’t worry – there’ll be
another party next year.
Posted: Fri - February 27, 2004 at 01:43 PM