Some Key Ingredients for Louisiana Cuisine Both the rich, complex Creole cuisine of New Orleans and the homey, country-style Cajun cuisine of Acadiana (French Louisiana) rely heavily on many ingredients that are made and grown locally. Substitutions can be made for some, but if youre going for anything like the real thing, try to get authentic ingredients. But first, as my (and everyones) grandmother says ... First ya make a roux. Roux. Just as it is in classical French cuisine, roux is a mixture of flour and fat, usually butter or oil. The proportion is roughly 1:1, but I tend to use slightly more flour than oil; maybe 1-1/4 cups of flour to 1 cup of oil. It is the basis for many Louisiana dishes, particularly gumbo, but also etouffees, sauce piquantes, and more. There are three basic types of roux: light (or what the Cajuns call blond), medium (or peanut butter colored), and dark. 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. For gumbos, for instance, Creole cooks tend to prefer a blond or medium roux, where Cajun cooks tend to prefer a very dark roux, which is wonderfully smoky tasting. There are, of course, exceptions to this. In fact, youll see people making many different levels of roux. Blond, light brown, medium-light brown, medium brown/peanut butter, and dark browns that range from the color of milk chocolate to the color of bittersweet chocolate. This is the most amazing roux of all in flavor, but the most difficult to achieve; its really easy to burn it from this point. Use your eyes and nose; if its gone over to being burned you can smell it. Its like the difference between really dark toast and burnt toast. You also have to take it off the heat slightly before the roux gets to the color you want, because the residual heat in the pan (particularly if its cast iron) will continue to cook the roux. This is why its a good idea to add your trinity (onion, celery, bell pepper) to the roux before it gets to your desired color, because thatll help slow the cooking process. Roux is used to thicken gumbos, sauces, étouffées or stews, and in the case of a darker roux to flavor the dish as well. Dark roux has more flavor, a wonderful roasted nutty flavor, but tends to have less thickening power. Preparation of a roux is dependent on cooking time; the longer you cook, the darker the roux. A blond roux will only take four or five minutes; a dark roux up to 20 or 25 minutes at high heat, or up to an hour at low heat. Roux must be stirred constantly to avoid burning. Constantly means not stopping to answer the phone, let the cat in, or flip the LP record over, and if youve got to go the bathroom ... hold it in or hand off your whisk or roux paddle to someone else. If you see black specks in your roux, youve burned it; throw it out and start over. When youre stirring your roux, be very careful not to splatter any on you. Its extremely hot, and it sticks. They dont call it Creole napalm for nothing ... I have a lovely burn scar on my forearm from last years Christmas Eve gumbo, when I got sloppy with the stirring. Certain dishes (like crawfish étouffée) would benefit from a butter-based roux, but if youre going to make a dark roux, this will take a long time. Butter roux must be cooked at low to low-medium heat, or the butter will scorch. Darker roux are better suited to being made with oil. If you know what youre doing, you can make an oil-based roux over medium-high to high heat, whisking like hell, and youll have a beautiful near-milk-chocolate colored roux in about 20 minutes rather than an hour. Peanut oil works best for high-heat roux cooking. Im told that some home cooks are making roux in the microwave now. No stirring!, they say. It works! Bah. Humbug. Theres a certain satisfaction to stirring it by hand that I myself refuse to delegate to a microwave. Some things simply must be done by hand if youre serious about this. Now, one not-so-bad idea is the oil-less roux, pioneered by Cajun Chef Enola Prudhomme. Basically, you just dump the flour into a cast-iron skillet and toast it dry, making sure to stir it around as you would a normal roux. Ive never tried this, but apparently it works rather well, and is perfect for folks who are on low-fat diets. Then, perhaps the next most important indigenous ingredient ... Crawfish. A Louisiana delicacy. Ecrevisse in French. Some folks call em mudbugs, hillbillies (Jed Clampett, for instance) call em crawdads, tourists and Yankees call em crayfish. If you go to New Orleans and ask for crayfish, youll be asked, Oh hey dawlin, where ya from? They are crawfish. Crawfish have a marvelous, delicate flavor, and the crawfish fat adds a mind-bogglingly delicious enrichment to sauces and the like. There no substitute for crawfish; if you want to make crawfish etouffee and you substitute shrimp, youve made shrimp etouffee. Louisiana does export some of its crawfish crop (but 90% of it, or about 10 million pounds per year, is consumed within the state), so some markets around the US do offer them. BEWARE! Crawfish do not keep well, and if they smell or taste the least bit fishy, theyre off. Best bet is to have them shipped live (or the frozen tails) from a source in Louisiana. See the sources page for some Louisiana seafood mail-order outlets. Next, sausages and seasoning meats ... Andouille. A spicy Louisiana smoked pork sausage. Not to be confused with the continental French andouillette, which is a tripe sausage and is icky. Hot or mild smoked sausage of any brand can be substituted, but good andouille is a joy. Check the sources page for mail-order information. Creole hot sausage. Regular pork sausage from your butcher just wont do. Fortunately, its easy to make it yourself, or you can mail-order it from some Louisiana outlets (Im not sure if Vaucressons mail orders, but Ill check). For southern Californians, Petes hot sausage is locally made by a Louisiana expatriate, and is available at most of the places in L.A. listed in the sources page. Tasso. Tasso is a very highly seasoned lean pork butt, used as a seasoning meat. It has an intense, delicious flavor, and a little goes a long way. I suppose you could substitute smoked ham, but you will not get remotely the same flavor. You can obtain tasso from a few mail-order sources, but if you have a smoker you can make it yourself. Next, seasonings and condiments ... Cane syrup. The clear or brown syrup made from sugar cane, and often used locally instead of maple syrup or those thin, nasty, artificially-flavored pancake syrups. The best cane syrup around is the wonderful brown stuff made by the good folks at Steens Syrup Mill in Louisiana. Cayenne pepper. Fiery ground red pepper made from the cayenne chile. Powerful stuff, and used liberaly in Louisiana cooking, especially in combination with white pepper and freshly ground black pepper. Crab, shrimp and crawfish boil. Spices for boiling seafood. They come either in a flow-through packet, in dry powdered form, or as a liquid concentrate, used to flavor the water in which seafood is boiled. Its strong, pungent and spicy. Zatarains, Rex, Yogi and Tony Chacheres are the prevalent brands. Zatarains comes in the well-knowf flow-through packet; the others are granulated, which you can add to the water and/or sprinkle on the seafood itself after boiling. Creole mustard. A thick, pungent, spicy, coarse local mustard used on po-boys as well as an ingredient in many dishes. The mustard seeds are marinated before preparation. Most common brands are Zatarains and Horse Shoe. If you cant find this where you live, substitute a coarse-grained, country-style whole-seed Dijon mustard. Filé powder. Filé powder (sometimes spelled file powder or called gumbo filé) is made from dried and ground sassafras leaf. It is used as a seasoning and primarily thickening agent in gumbo, and has a wonderfully pungent and aromatic flavor. Common local brands are Zatarains, Rex or Yogi. There is no substitute. Remember that filé should never be added to a pot of gumbo while its cooking, but rather added at the end when the gumbo is off the fire (its best when you sprinkle it on, cover the pot and let it sit for 15 minutes). If its brought back to a boil, it will turn stringy, so make sure to reheat any leftovers gently. Pronounced (FEE-lay). Tabasco and other hot sauces. The King of All Pepper Sauces. Available worldwide, and made in Avery Island, Louisiana by the McIlhenny family since the 1880s. Used as a table sauce and as a cooking ingredient. The McIlhenny Company now also makes a mild green jalapeño Tabasco, as well as garlic Tabasco and a wonderfully flavorful (but incendiary) Habanero Tabasco. Other good pepper sauces that are not as distinctively flavored as and are mellower than Tabasco are Crystal and Louisiana Red Hot. Sample and pick your favorite sauce, remembering that there are over 60 different brands of hot sauces made in Louisiana. Did you find this page useful? If so, please consider making a donation to this site, to help pay the server fees! creole and cajun recipe page the gumbo pages | search this site Chuck Taggart (e-mail chuck)
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 06:24:15 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015