Rad Gumbo-Sausage and Chicken

"Goodbye, Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh.
Me gotta go, pole the pirogue down the bayou.
My Yvonne, sweetest one, me oh my oh.
Son of a gun, gonna have big fun on the bayou.

Jambalaya and a crawfish pie and fillet gumbo
Cause tonight I'm gonna see my ma cher amio.
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gayo,
Son of a gun, gonna have big fun on the bayou.

Thibodeaux, Fontaineaux, the place is buzzin',
Kinfolk come to see Yvonne by the dozen.
Dress in style, go hog wild, and be gayo.

Son of a gun, gonna have big fun on the bayou."

Soooo…. I used to make gumbo.  Then I was misdiagnosed with Celiac disease and that met that the flour used to make any decent roux was POISON!  So that was a couple of wasted years but as S.E. Hinton told us in our adolescent literature class, “That Was Then and This Is Now”.  So it is cold, fall/winter 2016 time for some gumbo.  There is something about chicken and sausage gumbo that is just very comforting in the winter, with a fire when it is cold outside. I made it last week and it was good so I thought it deserved vein writ down. I recommend spending an afternoon making this this. Shop in the morning and get some fresh ingredients, put on some music and start to cook. As always... drink while you cook, like God intended.

Here is a little playlist for you:

http://www.allmusic.com/album/louisiana-gumbo-mw0000258089

Ingredients

1 Chicken

64 oz of chicken stock (two standard 32oz cartons

4 Cloves of Garlic

One lb of andouille (this means a pool cue shaped skin of sausage about 1 foot long)

One lb of polish sausage(this too means a pool cue shaped skin of sausage about 1 foot long)

I large green pepper

1 medium large to large white onion

2-3 stalks of celery

Teaspoon Smoked Paprika

Teaspoon Cayenne

2 Bay Leaves

Teaspoon Black Pepper

Teaspoon Salt

Cup of Green Onions

Teaspoon File Gumbo

Cup of green onions

½ cup of parsley

INSTRUCTIONS

A couple of things about making gumbo.  It as I said, it deserves a whole afternoon.  It can be a relaxed afternoon.  Take two hours to cook your chicken, cut up vegetables and cut up and brown sausage.  This is step one and you can do it and then shove everything in the refrigerator including the stock to use later or even the next day.  Part 2 is a two hour process but past the first half hour you don't need to do anything so relax.  Listen to music or NPR as you work and enjoy the time preparing something that 4-8 of your friends will love.    This is a narrative recipe because… you need to feel the gumbo.

"Won't find no etouffe
Mamm never ever could cook it that way
She's all ancien regime
No nouvell cuisine
She cook gumbo
A mighty rad gumbo
It's the only way she can go
Down at the Club Rad Gumbo"-Rad Gumbo/Little Feat

STEP ONE-PREPPING ALL YOUR INGREDIENTS

Buy a chicken.  The fresher the better but seriously you are boiling it.  If in St. Louis go to Soulard Farmers Market on a Saturday morning and go to the meat store there, Frandekas. It will not change your life but it is an excellent experience.  This morning i got to watch a woman by 5 cow necks.  Evidently they make great stock and soup.  But I digress.  Buy a chicken.  If you want pull the gizzards and whatever out of the cavity.  Some people like to things with them later, I normally pitch them so why not boil them to add more flavor to the stock?  So you buy a chicken, put it in an appropriate pot and pour over the 64 oz of chicken stock and then add water until chicken is covered.  Bring it to a boil and then reduce heat and let it simmer till meat literally can fall off the bone.  I like to throw in at least one clove of garlic and any fresh herbs like rosemary or thyme that I can scare up but this too is optional.  Boil it 1- ½ hours.

Pull the chicken out and set it on a cutting board, as you pull it out of boiling water let as much juice and whatever drain back into the stock.  Let the chicken cool.  This will allow it to cool.  You might be tempted to rip chicken apart while hot but you will in no particular order:

1. Burn your hands and shout profanities (perhaps in front of your children)

2. Because it is hot you will work quickly and chickens, due to a design flaw have a variety of useless, sharp, splintery bones which can pierce your girlishly soft hands and cause you to spout more profanities (again perhaps in front of your children or even better, other people’s children).

3. You will lose yield.

Once cooled, then start tearing it apart.  Since you are supplementing with sausage, be picky.  Get all the good white meat and dark meat you can but anything suspicious...pitch it.  Since it is chicken you can either throw the remaining carcass, bones and meat into a bag and pitch it, or save the bones, boil them down and boil them down again and then throw them out on the table to tell people’s future.

http://www.luckymojo.com/throwingthebones.html

Strain the remaining broth through a pasta colander to get 95% of percent of the remaining bones, skin, garlic and other crap out of the stock. If you have time, shove it into the fridge for a few hours because then you can skip the fat.  If you don't have time, don't worry about it.  That fat tastes good, it will just give your gumbo a slightly oilier sheen and that really is not bad and some people may prefer it.  This is not a diet or heart smart meal.

Set aside your pile of chicken meat.

This is all you need to yield.

This is what the rest of it looks like.  Bag it.

Cut up your two kinds of sausage into bite size or smaller chunks.  You might want to dice the andouille a little or cut it differently so if people want to avoid the heat they can be discernible from the milder polish sausage.  While your chicken is boiling I like to throw these pieces into a cast iron pan and brown them and get some carmalization on them.  This is an optional step.

Cut up one medium to large white onion, one green pepper and de-seed and cut up a jalapeno (or if you like more heat leave the seeds in, it is only one jalapeno in a big pot). Cut up 2 or 3 stalks of celery and set all that aside.  Don't be fussy when you cut it up, do a rough chop, it will be fine.

STEP 2-MAKING GUMBO!

Ok… gumbo is literally all about the roux.  Any gumbo lover or pretentious gourmand will tell you this.  It seems intimidating but only by bully foodies.  It is the simplest thing in the world.

Webster Helps Defining Roux:

“a cooked mixture of flour and fat used as a thickening agent in a soup or a sauce”

That sounds intimidating too but the best part is the French derivation:

“French, from beurre roux brown butter.”

Brown butter.  All you need to know is this.  It is simple, simple, simple, simple and all you have to do is pay attention.  Rough is equal parts vegetable oil and flour.  I recommend ¾ cup of each.  Dump them into a clean skillet or sauce pan.  For this, I like to be fussy.  My wife bought me a couple of excellent porcelain and iron pots.  They rock. Here is a decent example:

https://www.amazon.com/Tramontina-Quart-Covered-Enameled-Dutch/dp/B006GC1XDY/ref=sr_1_6?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1481407136&sr=1-6&keywords=porcelain+cast+iron+cookware

Do a little research and buy one.  They are great for everything.  Anyway…

Dump the oil and flour into your pot or pan over a medium heat.  Grab a wooden spoon (for God’s sake DO NOT tell me you don't have a wooden spoon) and start to stir in whatever pattern you want but I cannot emphasize this enough, you must stir constantly, it will bubble up a little but don't let that freak you out, keep stirring.  Consider having a full glass of red wine while you make the roux.  Stir and sip and stir and stir and stir and sip and stir and stir… you get it.  It goes taupe, it goes off white, bone, ecru, tan, brown and then chocolate brown...and then your done.  Should take 20 minutes, maybe 25 or 30 but spend the time and stir...stir...stir.  It is important.  It is the key to the whole thing….

This is how it starts.  Get all the lumps out of the flour and then stir in nice patterns while you drink you wine...nothing happens for a while.

And when it turns chocolate brown add the onions, celery and peppers, and bay leaves and salt and pepper, and paprika, thyme and 8 cups of stock.  Stir it all together and scrape that roux off the bottom when doing it and stir a few more times, reduce to simmer and then cover it let it cook for an hour.

After an hour add the chicken and the sausage and simmer for another hour. 10 minutes before you want to eat, stir in the file’ gumbo and the green onions.

Make some rice… I think white rice...Uncle Ben's or Minute Rice, no reason to be fussy.

Dump a fist full of rice into a bowl.  Recommend a big flat one but I don't have any so use any bowl.  Stir again and dump a couple of ladles over the rice and sprinkle lightly with a little parsley and serve.

Taking Stock

Soooooo...I decided not to got to work today. After all, it was Sunday. I had worked Saturday. I feel like I have worked Saturday and Sunday for about a month. The thing is... I do not really love working 7 days a week but this time of year, my wife works a lot. A whole lot and with the kids getting older and older they do not really need me or at least it does not feel like they do. (In all actuality there is a reasonably good chance that we are neglecting our 18 year old but that is neither here nor there). I mean it is but... what are you going to do about it? I mean sure, calling Missouri Division of Children’s Services might be a good idea but I digress.

I like to cook. I am not a good cook. My ability to follow recipe’s is... suspect t best. But I like to cook. I find it relaxing and when something comes out good and you feed it to people and you like it... well that is a little sweet, perhaps a lot sweet. I have reading Anthony Bourdain’s “Les Halles” cookbook and like every other thing that he discusses about quality food revolves around making your own stock. I thought you made stock from bullion cubes. It would appear that I... to quote my great contracts professor, the late Vincent Immel... “erred”.

So, I went to the counter at the grocery store and requested some beef or veal bones... and they looked at me like I was an idiot. They were of course correct. I had forgotten that after all of these years that most grocery stores get “boxed beef” which they trip down. there are no carcasses and very few bones. So, I politely left and headed to Bauman’s Meat Market where I buy some of their specialty stuff and knuckle bones for my dogs and they hooked me up. The I bought a couple onions and some celery and a few mushrooms and some carrots.

You spread the bones on a greased sheet and preheat the oven to 375 and then you rinse the bones then you spread some tomato paste on them and sprinke a little flour on them and put them in the oven, turning occasionally and you baked them for 45 minutes. Do not let them get black. While they are cooking, chop up your celery and onions and carrots and mushrooms into a rough chop and in the bottom of a big thick bottomed pot brown them all for a while in just a little Olive Oil till caramelized. When the bones are thoroughly browned dump them into the pot and fill to the top with cold water. Heat it up almost to a boil (but not a boil) and then reduce to a simmer. Clean the scum off the top (there will be a lot early and then not much) and simmer those suckers for 8-10 hours.

Now it is 8-10 hours later. I had enough time in between to make, and eat a 4lb pulled pork roast. The hardest part of the stock making is when you have let it simmer for that long and then you have to put it through a strainer and a cheese cloth, and then a strainer and a cheese cloth, again and again. Then you let it cool. Now I am refrigerating it and tomorrow I will skim the scum off the top of it and then store it in mason jars in the freezer for whenever I need it. the next question... what will I need it for? Only time will tell.

Meatballs!

Sooooo....10th Street Italian closed and it was (is) a minor disaster for me. Besides being a generally reliable place to eat downtown they served quick, good food but personally I found their meatball sandwich to die for. Spicy. Since there closure I have been seeking out meatball sandwiches that are comparable and I have been totally striking out. Most of the acclaimed meatball sandwiches I have been eating on the hill all see to be sweet rather then spicy. I hate that. So last night I had the whole family over (17 people I think) and decided that I was going to make spaghetti and meatballs. I did my normal internet search for recipes and cobbled this one together. The most important tip I got was not to use bread crumbs but soak a few pieces of bread in milk and use that to bind it, it keeps it fluffy and moist. They turned out great and next time I will likely add some more red pepper flakes to spice them up some more. It took about an hour start to finish. Enjoy.

Meatball Recipe 3/7/10
1 lb. Hamburger
1 lb. Ground Pork
3 Pieces of bread (soak them on a plate with milk when you start)
1 tbs. Kosher Salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 egg
2 onions
5 cloves garlic
Quarter cup grated parmesan

Put garlic and 1 onion into word processor and grate it fine into a paste.

Mix it all together in a big bowl, very gooey, have lots of paper towels to wipe hand on. Knead it with your hands. If you pull everything out of refrigerator it will be very cold. Knead it very thoroughly. After kneading let it set up for a couple minutes in the bowl. Grab a large pinch and roll between both palms into a ping pong ball size. Set on a plate, do another one. When that plate is full...

Heat large cast iron skillet and coat liberally with Pam. You will need to brown meatballs 1/2 at a time due to skillet limitations. Set the meatballs in there and if they start sizzling lightly you are at right temperature. Do not use a spatula but let them brown a second and flip em around with a fork. Put half of second onion chopped in with the meatballs in the skillet.
Go make a second plate of them while that one is browning. Flip em around first batch and cook em thoroughly. They should be moist enough that you cannot burn. Brown second batch the same way.

Serve in red sauce (I just doctor up some Ragu with beer onions and more garlic) with spaghetti or get some cheese and good bread and make a meatball sandwich.

Recipe

CHILI PEPPER POT ROAST
1 Arm Roast at Dierbergs.2.
2 HOT banana peppers and 3 jalepenoes.
3. 3 cloves of garlic !

4.Kosher Rock Salt
5.1 big white onion
6. A few sprigs of cilantro
7. Can of chipotle peppers in mole sauce
Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees. Take the arm roast and coat it thoroughly in rock salt. Take the banana peppers and cut into 3 or four long strips and TAKE THE SEEDS OUT! Chop the jalapenos however you like and you do not have to take the seeds out. Chop up the onion. Press the garlic onto either the roast sitting in the pot or into the chopped peppers and onions. Mix in the cilantro. Slice the roast on the top about ¾ inch deep and lay in the banana peppers and pack them into the sliced roast. Pour about ½ the can of chipotle sauce with a couple of the peppers on top of the roast. Put the rest of the mixture on top of the roast in the pan. Cook for three hours. Pull the roast out in pieces and split with two forks. Drain some of the liquid onto the roast in the container. The liquid should be very spicy and the remaining onions and peppers are fiery, I throw them away. Put onto hamburger buns or into tortillas with mild cheeses. It reheats well for three to four days either warmed up in a pan or reheated in the microwave. Its SPICY