rice – Page 6 – Courage in the Kitchen

Shrimp Étouffée

I was introduced to Creole cooking on my first visit to New Orleans many years ago. I ate barbecue shrimp, jambalaya, gumbo and shrimp étouffée. The only dish with which I was vaguely familiar was jambalaya, and that was because of the Hank Williams hit song, “On the Bayou.” The food was so good that I bought a cookbook of Creole cuisine, La Bouche Creole, by Leon E. Soniat, Jr.

The title literally means “The Creole Mouth.” It’s a fun book to read filled with Soniat’s accounts of how Mamere (his grandmother) and Mamete (his mother) prepared many of the recipes. La Bouche Creole has been in print for over thirty years. You should get a copy if you want to enjoy authentic Creole cuisine. Meanwhile, here is a modified version of one of my favorite recipes from Soniat’s collection, shrimp étouffée.

Étouffée means “smothered” so shrimp étouffée is shrimp smothered in a thick sauce. It resembles shrimp creole like my mother used to make, but shrimp étouffée has a more complex flavor that I think you will find both intriguing and delicious. The secret is the beef broth and brown roux. It takes longer to make shrimp étouffée than shrimp creole, but that roux creates a rich sauce that is heavenly.

Soniat calls for three pounds of shrimp, and that is what I used the first time I made the dish. Shrimp are expensive, however, and I now use about two pounds, half medium and half large.

INGREDIENTS:

3 T butter

3 T vegetable oil

6 T all-purpose flour

2 cups chopped onions

1 cup chopped green bell pepper

1 cup chopped celery

4 or 5 cloves garlic

1 6 oz can tomato paste

3 cups beef broth

2 cups water

3 bay leaves

1 tsp. dried basil

1/2 tsp. dried thyme

1 tsp. chili powder

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

1 tsp. salt

2- 3 lbs. peeled shrimp

1 cup chopped shallots

2 T chopped parsley

PROCEDURE:

First make a roux. Heat three tablespoons each of butter and vegetable oil over low heat in a large pot or Dutch oven. Add six tablespoons flour and use a wooden spoon to stir it frequently until the flour is medium brown, about the color of milk chocolate. It will take about twenty minutes to do this right.

Pay close attention to the flour so it does not burn. Prepare the vegetables while the roux is cooking. Clean and chop the onion, bell pepper and celery into a quarter to half-inch dice. Clean and mince the garlic.

When the roux is brown, add the vegetables followed by the tomato paste, beef broth and water. Raise the heat and bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat. While the vegetables simmer, add the bay leaves and stir in the basil, thyme, chili powder, cayenne pepper, black pepper and salt. Clean and chop the shallots into a quarter-inch dice and finely chop the parsley.

Peel and devein the shrimp if necessary, or thaw frozen cooked shrimp and remove the tails.

After the vegetables have simmered about forty-five minutes, add the shallots and parsley. Simmer for another ten minutes, then add the shrimp and bring the pot back to a simmer. If you are using raw shrimp, allow the pot to simmer about seven or eight minutes, then turn off the heat. With precooked shrimp, turn the heat off as soon as the pot begins to simmer.

Cover the pot and let it stand on the back of the stove for an hour or so to blend the flavors. Reheat just to a simmer before serving.

Serve the étouffée over white rice with a green salad and crusty bread.

NOTES: Soniat calls for raw shrimp, which you need to peel before cooking. Not having any raw shrimp in the house one Sunday morning, I tried two packages of frozen cooked shrimp. I thawed them, removed the tails, and added them to the pot as the final ingredient. The dish was still delicious, so you can get by with cooked shrimp.

One cup of uncooked rice will produce about three cups of cooked rice, so if you start with one and one-half cups of uncooked rice, you will end up with six to eight servings to smother with shrimp étouffée.

Mike’s Little Chickens

The story begins many years ago when my mother called her youngest daughter to ask a favor. Pam and her husband, Mike, lived a few miles north of Chicago where Mike was a chemist for a major corporation.

“Pammy, could you come up to Hayward for a few days to help me clean out Dad’s things?” asked my mother. My father had died the previous fall and my mother had moved into an apartment in Hayward for the winter. When spring arrived, she was ready to move back into the house in the country with its birds, bears and flowers.

It was May, and school was still in session, so Mike could oversee Carolyn and Ben as a single parent for a few days with after-school help from the neighbors. Carolyn was ten and Ben, eight years old.

When Saturday arrived, Mike asked Ben and Carolyn what they wanted for supper. He assumed that they would want to go out for hamburgers or pizzas after two days of Dad’s cooking. He was about to be surprised.

“I want one of those little chickens,” said Ben. Carolyn said that she wanted one too. The problem was that Mike did not know what they were talking about.

“You want to go to the KFC. Good” said Mike.

“No! We want little chickens to eat here,” said Ben.

“They were good,” added Carolyn.

After a game of twenty questions, Mike finally understood that they were talking about Cornish game hens which Pam had cooked a few times. So father, daughter and son drove to the supermarket and bought three Cornish game hens and the ingredients Mike dredged from his memory of how he roasted them when it was his turn to cook for his housemates when he was in graduate school.

As you might expect from a young man who had to cook and do the dishes, he had created a simple recipe that could be made in one pan. He roasted four birds, one for each guy, and the dish became a regular on the house menu when it was Mike’s turn to cook.

Incidentally, the kids loved “Dad’s little chickens” and Pam still thinks the story is hilarious.

I have cut Mike’s recipe in half, but it still serves four. Of course, you can easily increase the number of birds and adjust the amount of rice and broth you need to accommodate more diners. You will need more baking pans, because you should not crowd the hens.

INGREDIENTS:

2 Cornish game hens
1 1/2 cups white rice
3 T butter, divided
2 cups chicken broth
Salt and pepper

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 375º. Grease or spray an eight by twelve inch glass baking pan. Rinse the rice and put it in the pan. Stir in the broth and a dash or two of black pepper. Dot with a tablespoon of butter.

Rub the game hens with salt and pepper inside and out and put a half tablespoon of butter into each body cavity. Set the birds on the rice, breast side up, and put them on the the center shelf for thirty minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and cover it with aluminum foil. Return it to the oven and bake for another thirty-five minutes.

Melt a tablespoon of butter. Remove the foil and baste the hens with the butter. Put the pan back in the oven and continue baking for another half hour or until the hens are done. An instant-read thermometer should register 165º in the thickest part of the thigh.

Serve with bread and salad.

NOTES: Ben and Carolyn were right. Cornish game hens are little chickens. They were first produced in the 1950‘s by Alphonsine “Te” and Jacques Makowsky at their poultry farm in Connecticut. Alphonsine came up with the idea of crossing small Cornish game cocks with larger chickens. The most successful cross was with a Malayan fighting cock and a white Plymouth rock hen.

The first “Rock Cornish Hens” were meant to be a substitute for the Guinea hens the Makowsky farm had been supplying restaurants after all the birds had been killed in a fire, but the Cornish game hens were an instant success in their own right and are prized today for their succulent white meat.

Jerri especially likes the crispy rice on the edges of the pan.