A little Cajun food porn for you

A couple nights ago, I needed to fix something that Cpl. Wolves and I could have for lunch at work. I decided gumbo would be good. As it turns out, I was right. My photo record here is incomplete, as I only decided at the last minute to make this a food porn post, but you'll get the general idea. First, bring out the ingredients. You will need 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil, f tablespoons of flour, 2 pounds of fresh okra (never mind) or 2 cans of okra, a large onion chopped, a bell pepper minced, 2 cans of tomatoes chopped or a quart of tomatoes from you garden that you canned last year, 2 stalks of chopped celery, a little parsely, a little thme, 1 tablespoon of basil, a little Worcestershire sauce, a little salt, a little pepper. You will want some sausage and a couple pounds of shrimp. This time, I used scallops, because I had some leftovers and some raw scallops in the freezer. It worked. You will also need 2 quarts of water. Yeah, not everything is pictured here:

Because I think you would be crazy to do otherwise, you also should have some Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning. I put it in every even vaguely Cajun dish I make -- gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, whatever. Gotta have it.

So first, heat the oil in a large pan, then mix in the flour. Stir constantly as you bring it to a low boil:

Reduce the heat below a boil and continue stirring. Cook the roux, stirring constantly, until it achieves a rich, reddish color and is very thick:

Meanwhile, chop up your celery, bell pepper and onion and sautee those veggies in a pan with butter:

You will need meat. Slice your sausage and brown it nicely:

You also must sautee your scallops:

Seriously, there is going to be a lot of cooking going on at once. The sausage and scallops probably will happen consecutively in the same pan, but they will happen at the same time as the roux and the veggies. You will be busy.

When the roux is red and thick, slowly add the water, stirring it in thoroughly.

You will add the okra next. I did not have fresh or canned okra, but I had a couple cans of canned okra and tomatoes and a can of okra, tomatoes and corn. Probably not enough okra, but I was doing this on the fly. Anyway, at this point, having stirred in the water and thoroughly mixed it with the roux, add the fresh or canned okra and simmer for a few minutes. Then add the sauteed veggies:

Add your tomatoes -- a quart canned from your garden or two cans of diced tomatoes -- and a can of corn wouldn't hurt. Simmer a little while:

Gumbo should be thick. If you add enough okra, which is a thickener, and did your roux right, your gumbo should get thicker as it cooks. Cook your gumbo on low heat until it is thick, then serve over rice:

Bon appetit.

Saints-kick-some-Eagle-butt game food porn

It would appear that everybody who says the Saints suck on the road and thus would lose to Philly were wrong. There was a lot of that going around, but not here at Chez Wolves, where Marrying Into Wolves is a Saints fan and, thus, so are we unless they are playing our beloved Packers. As it is, the Saints win tonight means the Packers don't have to go to Seattle next week if they beat the 49ers tomorrow. I'm good with that.

Be all that as it may, we had game food tonight. First of all, we had skins, because that's what we do:

Because this was a night game, the game food represented a late dinner and thus needed to be something more dinner-like than we sometimes might have. Since we were watching -- and rooting for -- the Saints, gumbo seemed like the natural choice. So gumbo it was. The benefit to you, dear reader, is that I am now going to share with you how to make gumbo. Lucky you, huh?

You will start with some vegetable oil, flour, 2 pounds of okra (fresh okra is expensive this time of year, so two cans of okra is acceptable), 1 large onion, 1 bell pepper, two stalks of celery, one quart of tomatoes (recipe says two cans, I use one quart of my own jarred tomatoes -- feel free to use the canned), 1 pound of shrimp, peeled and deveined, 1/4 teaspoon of thyme, 1 tablespoon of basil, 1 tablespoon of parsley, 1 teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce, one pound of polish sausage, and two quarts of water.

I realize not everything is pictured here. It was getting crowded. Live with it.

OK, so first, slice up your kielbasa -- that's the polish sausage, people -- and brown it in your pan:

Put the sausage in some kind of container and set it aside once it is browned. Into your pan, put four tablespoons of flour and four tablespoons of vegetable oil. Mix them up right, and heat over medium heat, stirring constantly:

Keep stirring and cooking this roux until you get a nice golden color, like so:

You will now slowly add the two quarts of water:

Keep stirring as you add the water about a cup at a time. The roux-water mixture should get pretty thick at first:

By the time all the water is in, it won't be so thick, but roux is a thickener, so it will contribute to the eventual proper thickness of the gumbo. Next, you should chop up your vegetables. I used two medium onions instead of one large, so first I chopped up the celery and one of the onions:

Then I chopped up the bell pepper and one of the onions:

It adds flavor to sautee the vegetables in butter before adding to the gumbo, so I did that:

Meanwhile, add the okra to your aspiring gumbo, which right now is pretty much just roux and water:

Cook over medium heat while the vegetables sautee, then add the vegetables to the mix:

Add your tomatoes to the mix:

Add your seasonings, including Tony Chachere's Cajun Seasoning to taste. The recipe calls for salt and pepper to taste, but you should use Tony Chachere's if you want this to taste like gumbo. If you don't have Tony Chachere's, I'm not sure what's wrong with you.  Anyway, also add the sausage your browned and set aside earlier, then mix it up right, cover that sucker and simmer over low to medium-low heat for about an hour:

While that's simmering, peel and devein a pound of shrimp. The recipe calls for 2 pounds, but I substituted a pound of kielbasa for one of the pounds of shrimp. You can do what you like. It's OK to use frozen shrimp. I won't judge you for that, since I did. I will, however, judge you for not using Tony Chachere's. What the hell is wrong with you people? If you did use Tony Chachere's, never mind. Anyway, peel the shrimp and put it into the refridgerator until I say so.

Once the gumbo has simmered for at least an hour, turn up the heat a little bit and add the shrimp. Give it about 10 minutes (don't overcook unless you like tough shrimp) and then serve the gumbo over rice:

Yeah, it's pretty damn good. Bon appetit.

Yeah, we got non-Packers playoff game food porn coming

Hey, it's the playoffs. I can't limit myself to the Packers, even though we are, for the moment, in the playoffs. (Yes, I own two shares in the team, so I can say "we." The rest of you who root for other teams that don't sell shares -- which is all of them -- can suck it.) Anyway, Marrying Into Wolves is a Saints fan, so tonight for game food we will be having, among other things, gumbo. Seems kind of New Orleans-ish, doesn't it. So stay tuned. Who dat say day gonna beat them Saints?

All God's chilluns like food porn

Yeah, it's that time again: food porn, baby. You know you can't turn away, so here it comes. Today's offering is -- drum roll, please -- gumbo. Not soup, not stew, just good.

First off, get a nice, heavy pot, kinda like this one:

You will need a beer, as Cajun food requires it.

OK, now toss in 4 tablespoons of flour and 4 tablespoons of oil. I use olive oil, you can use what you like or what you have. You also can use butter -- we're making a roux here, people, to serve as a thickener for the gumbo. As long as your proportions are 1:1 for the flour and oil/butter, you're good. So any way, heat the oil or the butter, then mix in the flour so it looks something like this:

 Cook that mixture over highish low heat or lowish medium heat until it takes on a nice, reddish-brown color, like this:

Stir often, if not constantly, and keep an eye on it: it's easy to burn, and you don't want that.

Fine, while that is going on -- you're going to have to multi-task here, so it might be better to chop this stuff up before you start your roux if you're nervous about not being able to do both at the same time without burning the roux -- you need to chop up one large onion or two medium onions. I like to use Vidalia onions, although any sweet onion will do in a pinch. Not a bid fan of yellow onions, but I accept that people use them. You also want to chop up two celery stalks -- two ribs, not two bunches; let's not get carried away here:

I did not have a large onion, so I went with two medium onions. You can never have too much onion in a soup/stew/gumbo.

You also will chop up a green bell pepper, and have it ready:

 Once your roux has achieved that lovely red-brown color, you must gradually add two quarts of water, stirring constantly as you go so the roux and the water blend. Then add two pounds of chopped okra. Hard to get fresh okra, so you can used canned okra. Two cans might be best, as your okra is intended to act as a thickener. By the way, you're done chopping vegetables, so you can open that second beer now, as the risk of amputating a fingertip is gone.

Because you also are going to add tomatoes -- my recipe calls for canned tomatoes, but I usually use tomatoes from my garden that I have jarred -- it is permissible to use a canned okra and tomato mix:

While you're adding this canned shit, you also should sautee your onions and celery in butter. Makes it taste better. Don't sautee to a conclusion -- we don't want this stuff carmelized. Just soften it up:

Add the bell pepper and the onion-celery mix to the main pot. Bring everything to a boil, then take the heat down to low and let it simmer for about an hour, like this:

I know, hard to tell that's a low boil, but it is. If you like tomatoes, you can add another can of tomatoes. It's all good. So as it simmers, you can add spices:

These are added to taste: salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce, definitely. You can toss in some red pepper, black pepper some Tabasco and/or some Tony Chachere seasoning if you like. I recommend all of the above, but this may take some experimentation on your part. If you are cooking Cajun, you pretty much have to use Tony Chachere. Ditto for Tabasco. No tour of the French Quarter in Nawlins is complete without swinging by the McIlhenny house, the folks who own the company that makes Tabasco sauce. Nice crib. Great family, great product. Use it and shut up, quit bugging me.

Now, you might want to put some meat in this sucker, so once things have simmered for 45 minutes or so, add about a pound of cooked, chopped chicken. You can chop up some boneless chicken and brown it, but that would have to go in sooner, as it will need to cook. I use cooked chicken, cut it up and toss it in. If you don't keep cooked chicken breasts in your freezer, plan accordingly and cook up some chicken chunks.

Ditto for shrimp. Once the chicken has been in long enough to heat through (or cook, if you started with raw, browned chicken chunks), you will be adding two pounds of shrimp. You can use previously cooked shrimp (I did) or you can use peeled, raw shrimp. If you use pre-cooked shrimp, just let the shrimp heat through, then take the gumbo off the heat. For raw peeled shrimp, give it about five minutes before taking it off the heat. Do not overcook your shrimp.

The final product should be pretty thick, somewhere between soup and gravy. I was pressed for time and was forced to serve before it was truly thick enough, but it worked. Serve over rice:

Naturally, the gumbo will be thicker tomorrow. Despite the insufficient thickness, I am told that it was pretty good: