Chapter 50

Okay, here's a real Cajun recipe

(Author's note: Ever since Cajun food started figuring in my stories, I've gotten requests for a gumbo recipe. Here's one from a blog by a friend of mine. If I wrote recipes, it would be something like this. One more note: through the power of the Internet, you can order ingredients such as file' and prepared roux from online. Google "Cajun grocer".)

First, let me state that I was raised Cajun, although Dad's got 50% German Swiss ancestry. It is not unlikely that my first "solid" food was gumbo, although I don"t remember. I cook a very workmanlike gumbo myself. In the notes below, I am referring to the gumbos I enjoyed all my life in Southwest Louisiana. They make a sort of gumbo in the New Orleans area, too, and they can call it what they want, but I have tried some, and I find them as close to REAL gumbo as New Orleans is close to REAL Cajun, i.e., not really.

First, let's talk about ingredients: Traditionally, gumbo is a simple dish concocted out of ingredients either fresh or those suitable for long-term unrefrigerated storage, because that's the way Cajun homes (including my great grandmother's and grandmother's) used to be. So, fresh seafood, from local bayous and lakes, chicken (they were running around the homestead somewhere), guinea fowl (not uncommon in Louisiana), these meats formed the basis of most gumbos. Add to this some smoky Cajun sausage. You hear a lot of talk about andouille sausage these days.

As far as Grandma was concerned, sausage was sausage: pork, salt and pepper and other spices, smoked dark and hard, and it would keep forever. Vegetables consisted of onions, both yellow onions and the green onions that usually grew in the kitchen garden, bell pepper, and various hot peppers, and sometimes parsley or celery. The dry ingredients were flour (for the roux) and rice, usually medium-grain. Spices were simple: salt and pepper. Pepper could be black pepper or various fresh, pickled or dried hot peppers. And lastly, there was file', the pulverized dried leaves of the sassafras tree. These are what go into a traditional gumbo, as I was familiar with. You can find recipes that call for spices not on this list, and strange ingredients like ketchup. You can use these, and you can call it "gumbo"?. You can call your skateboard a Mercedes, too.

The RECIPE:

First, make a roux. This word "roux" rhymes with "boo". It has been said that the Cajun recipe for angelfood cake begins with making a roux, but this is not true. A roux is simply flour and oil heated and stirred in a pot over heat until the color changes from flour white to varying shades of brown. I prefer my roux to be dark. Refer to the color of your walnut Garand stock (obligatory gun reference is NOW satisfied) for a color reference.

How much of each? Enough is how much. Lemme guess and say start with ¾ cup of flour and enough oil mixed in so that it fills in the furrow left by the spoon in the bottom of the pot. This is enough roux for about 4 or 5 quarts of gumbo. It is easiest to use a heavy pot for this. I prefer a 5-quart cast iron Dutch oven. Making a roux in a cast-iron pot is very good for the cast iron.

Put the pot on the fire. You do use FIRE, don't you? Man has cooked over flames since time immemorial. It's the way things should be done. Put the oil and the flour in the pot, turn the heat to medium or medium-high, and begin stirring. Keep stirring. Don't stop stirring. Over a period of time, the roux will transform from white to tan to beige to brown. That 'brown' should be the color of milk chocolate. Here are some hints. Just as the roux is done, you should begin to see some tendrils of bluish smoke coming from the pot. Keep stirring. If you let it sit, it will burn. If it smells burnt, toss it out and start over. S****t happens.

When the roux is the right color, "break' it by dumping in your chopped onions (a yellow onion the size of your fist, more or less, and a handful of chopped green onions, often called scallions by the pretentious. You can also add a chopped up stalk of celery and maybe a little chopped bell pepper. Chopped here means pieces about a quarter inch or so. Doesn't have to be exact.) into the very hot roux. Keep stirring. The vegetables will cook somewhat and at the same time cool the roux down so it doesn't keep cooking and burn. Make sure your windows are closed when you do this. The smell is wonderful. Traffic may stop on nearby thoroughfares if it gets out.

When the sizzling stops, add water or chicken stock. (Grandma didn't use chicken stock. She did use a chicken that was usually old and tough and cooking this bird was an all-day process. These chickens had a lot of flavor and the long cooking needed to tenderize these tough old birds produced its own stock) and your meat.

For chicken and sausage gumbo, you can use a fryer, cut into serving size or smaller pieces, or the equivalent amount of boneless chicken, and about a half-pound of good smoked sausage, cut up. I like ¼ to 3/8 slices. Some folks like bigger chunks. Your call. (NOTE: Eckrich Farms or Smokey Hollow is NOT my idea of "good smoked sausage".) Good smoked sausage is deep reddish brown or brown, smells like smoke, and you can see the bits of meat in it, not the homogeneous mass that you find in bad sausage. You can substitute a wild goose or two, or a couple of guineas, in place of the chicken.

For seafood gumbo, after the roux is broken with the vegetables, add water, a pound or two of peeled raw shrimp, a pint or two of raw oysters (add the liquor that they come in, too.) and cleaned crabs, or combinations of the above. Even small crabs, too small to be eaten, can be cleaned and thrown into the gumbo, where they add immeasurably to the flavor. To this day, crabs too small to eat boiled are often called "gumbo crabs" in South Louisiana.