You can't just make a little bit of gumbo. It's impossible; I've tried, and the smallest amount of gumbo I've ever been able to make is eight quarts. You add a little of one thing, a little of something else, and before you know it, you have two or three gallons of gumbo simmering.
Gumbo is incredible, because with just a little money you can make this dish a delicacy; delicious, filling, and possibly the most nutritious one-dish meal money can buy. I want to share my recipe and my love of gumbo with everyone, but the trouble is, I don't HAVE a recipe; gumbo isn't a recipe as much as it is a process of love and intuition! But I'm going to try, because I believe that if you know the very basics of what goes into it, you will be able to make your own savory stew that will be unique as a fingerprint, warm, nurturing, and perfect.
2 TBSP chicken fat, bacon grease, or lard
1 yellow onion
4 cloves garlic
2 TBSP flour
32 oz chicken broth
32 oz diced tomatoes
16 oz cut okra (frozen is fine)
1 cup black eyed peas
1 cup frozen or fresh lima beans
1 cup cut corn
1 lb catfish, salmon, or cod
2 links Andouille sausage
1 lb shelled shrimp
1 bunch collard greens or kale
2 medium carrots
2 medium potatoes
1 green or red bell pepper
1 TBSP red chili flakes (adjust to taste)
2 tsp Herbes de Provence, or basil, thyme, or pretty much whatever you have on hand
1 tsp black pepper
Salt to taste
Thoroughly cook the sausages in the grease; set aside to cool. Chop the onion and cook it in the grease until translucent; add the flour and brown slightly. Pour the broth in all at once and stir, then add the tomatoes. Chop and add everything but the fish and shrimp, add a bit of water if needed, and simmer it for 2-3 hours until tender. Add the shrimp and fish and simmer for 30 more minutes. Serve over "dirty" rice, which is just rice (I prefer brown) seasoned with a bit of garlic powder, paprika, black pepper, and thyme.
Modify all the ingredients at will, but don't leave out the okra, or it's not gumbo!
I made this on Saturday, and I'm just finishing off a bowl of leftovers for lunch. It still hasn't lost it's charm, and if anything is even more delicious on the third day. It also freezes well (which is a good thing, considering how much of it I have...)
Monday, March 7, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
The comfort of posole
Tonight, instead of the usual Friday night roast, I decided that my body and my soul need posole.
It's one of my favorite foods; pork shoulder simmered with onions and hominy for hours until it's fall-apart tender, served over shredded fresh cabbage with lime juice and cilantro. I can eat it until I'm bursting, and live on a pot of it for a week without becoming tired of it. Best of all, it's more than delicious; it's nutritious, comforting, and cheap.
I started with a 4-lb pork shoulder roast that was already in my freezer, and put it in a large stockpot with water to cover it, and a quart of broth I also had in my freezer. The broth is wholly optional, as this flavorful cut of meat will make its own stock as it simmers. A whole onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, and about 1/2 cup of ground red chilies went into the pot, as well as a couple of tablespoons of marjoram (sometimes sold as Mexican oregano) and a couple of juniper berries. Then the whole thing simmered with the lid on for about six hours, until the meat was falling apart, and I added salt to taste and a couple of cans of white hominy. Honestly, dried posole corn is best, but I would have had to think about it yesterday, then soak it with lime overnight and degerm it by hand... which always leaves my thumbs sore after hours of picking the germ off the posole. Tonight, it was all about the canned hominy, and I am perfectly happy with that!
The posole was red and greasy, almost done and smelling irresistibly good, when I realized I needed to make a store run for sour cream and hominy, as well as a couple of other crucial ingredients; limes and cilantro. I am making gumbo for a party tomorrow night, so I figured it would be a good time to snag the ingredients for that as well. I already have a few things (lima beans, canned tomatoes) so it wasn't a huge shopping trip. From my receipt:
2 cans hominy
Frozen okra
Black eyed peas
Catfish nuggets
Italian sausage (hot)
Raw shrimp
collard greens
Sour cream
Green cabbage
Green onions
Cilantro
2 limes
Cabernet Sauvignon (of the cheapest variety... I'm out of box wine)
My total grocery bill, wine and everything, was $30.12, which is pretty excellent for enough food to keep a family of 5 fed for about four days. The stuff I already had on hand, the pork roast and other gumbo ingredients like rice and tomatoes, came to about $10.
I've got the hominy in there simmering with the rest of the posole for an hour or so to merge the flavors; when it's ready, I'll ladle it over shredded cabbage, with minced cilantro and green onions, a spoonful of sour cream, and a wedge of lime.
Simple red posole:
4-lb pork shoulder roast
8 quarts of water
1 onion, minced
2 tablespoons dried marjoram
6 tablespoons red chili powder (paprika), mild or hot depending on taste
4 cloves of garlic
2 juniper berries (optional)
2 32-oz cans of hominy
Salt to taste
Simmer pork with other ingredients for 4-6 hours, until falling apart.
Using two forks, pull meat into smaller chunks.
Add hominy and simmer another hour.
Serve over:
Green cabbage, chopped finely
Garnish with:
White or green chopped onion
Minced cilantro
Sour cream
Lime wedge
Radish
It's one of my favorite foods; pork shoulder simmered with onions and hominy for hours until it's fall-apart tender, served over shredded fresh cabbage with lime juice and cilantro. I can eat it until I'm bursting, and live on a pot of it for a week without becoming tired of it. Best of all, it's more than delicious; it's nutritious, comforting, and cheap.
I started with a 4-lb pork shoulder roast that was already in my freezer, and put it in a large stockpot with water to cover it, and a quart of broth I also had in my freezer. The broth is wholly optional, as this flavorful cut of meat will make its own stock as it simmers. A whole onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, and about 1/2 cup of ground red chilies went into the pot, as well as a couple of tablespoons of marjoram (sometimes sold as Mexican oregano) and a couple of juniper berries. Then the whole thing simmered with the lid on for about six hours, until the meat was falling apart, and I added salt to taste and a couple of cans of white hominy. Honestly, dried posole corn is best, but I would have had to think about it yesterday, then soak it with lime overnight and degerm it by hand... which always leaves my thumbs sore after hours of picking the germ off the posole. Tonight, it was all about the canned hominy, and I am perfectly happy with that!
The posole was red and greasy, almost done and smelling irresistibly good, when I realized I needed to make a store run for sour cream and hominy, as well as a couple of other crucial ingredients; limes and cilantro. I am making gumbo for a party tomorrow night, so I figured it would be a good time to snag the ingredients for that as well. I already have a few things (lima beans, canned tomatoes) so it wasn't a huge shopping trip. From my receipt:
2 cans hominy
Frozen okra
Black eyed peas
Catfish nuggets
Italian sausage (hot)
Raw shrimp
collard greens
Sour cream
Green cabbage
Green onions
Cilantro
2 limes
Cabernet Sauvignon (of the cheapest variety... I'm out of box wine)
My total grocery bill, wine and everything, was $30.12, which is pretty excellent for enough food to keep a family of 5 fed for about four days. The stuff I already had on hand, the pork roast and other gumbo ingredients like rice and tomatoes, came to about $10.
I've got the hominy in there simmering with the rest of the posole for an hour or so to merge the flavors; when it's ready, I'll ladle it over shredded cabbage, with minced cilantro and green onions, a spoonful of sour cream, and a wedge of lime.
Simple red posole:
4-lb pork shoulder roast
8 quarts of water
1 onion, minced
2 tablespoons dried marjoram
6 tablespoons red chili powder (paprika), mild or hot depending on taste
4 cloves of garlic
2 juniper berries (optional)
2 32-oz cans of hominy
Salt to taste
Simmer pork with other ingredients for 4-6 hours, until falling apart.
Using two forks, pull meat into smaller chunks.
Add hominy and simmer another hour.
Serve over:
Green cabbage, chopped finely
Garnish with:
White or green chopped onion
Minced cilantro
Sour cream
Lime wedge
Radish
Food fighting
You know, people really want there to be "good" foods and "bad" foods. I think it must be rooted in an intense need to have an enemy, to demonize something. The reality is that humans are the rats of the primate world; we can extract nutrition from a stunning array of foods, even from what is basically garbage. We are highly adaptive omnivores who can not only survive, but thrive on a wide variety of diets. People hate this for some reason; psychologically, we need boundaries. We need rules. We need "good calories" and "bad calories". Even when a researcher comes along and tries to tell us, "Wait, no; that's not how it works", we insist on twisting his meaning to support our diet religions. We demonized meat and fat ten years ago, and now we demonize grain. Listen; it's simple. Eat a wide variety of whole fresh food, and go outside to play. Your body might not like some foods that other people's bodies like; and that's OK. That doesn't make you wrong and them right, or you right and them wrong. Just eat something else. And, GO PLAY.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
The economy of tuna fish
One of my childhood comfort foods is spaghetti with tuna sauce. It sounds a little weird, I suppose; it's just white sauce, the same recipe as you find on a box of corn starch, with a drained can of tuna mixed in, served over spaghetti. My version has some shredded cheddar added as well; it's basically a stovetop tuna casserole. My kids love it, and it's one of those fast, cheap and easy fallback dinners I can make when I don't have much time and didn't plan ahead.
Something odd I've been noticing about tuna fish for the last several years is that the store brand is invariably superior in flavor and consistency to the more expensive name brands. I cannot for the life of me come up with an explanation for this... it really doesn't make any sense. For them to be the same quality could make sense; many different brands are the same product, packed in the same facility, with different labels slapped on. But in the case of tuna, the difference in quality, as well as price, is so remarkable as to defy explanation. If you buy solid white albacore, the cheaper store brand is typically a large firm chunk of fish in a can, with a bit of clear broth or oil, while the name brand version will be a smallish hunk or two swimming in a morass of fish mush. If you buy the chunk light tuna, the store brand is usually, as implied by the name, chunks of fish in water or oil that can be drained off, while the name brand is a can of swampy pulp that can't effectively be separated from the liquid it's packed in.
I have no idea what the deal is. I just pay my 85 cents and dump it into a pan of white sauce.
Something odd I've been noticing about tuna fish for the last several years is that the store brand is invariably superior in flavor and consistency to the more expensive name brands. I cannot for the life of me come up with an explanation for this... it really doesn't make any sense. For them to be the same quality could make sense; many different brands are the same product, packed in the same facility, with different labels slapped on. But in the case of tuna, the difference in quality, as well as price, is so remarkable as to defy explanation. If you buy solid white albacore, the cheaper store brand is typically a large firm chunk of fish in a can, with a bit of clear broth or oil, while the name brand version will be a smallish hunk or two swimming in a morass of fish mush. If you buy the chunk light tuna, the store brand is usually, as implied by the name, chunks of fish in water or oil that can be drained off, while the name brand is a can of swampy pulp that can't effectively be separated from the liquid it's packed in.
I have no idea what the deal is. I just pay my 85 cents and dump it into a pan of white sauce.
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