The Last Fish: Seafood Gumbo

I have this radical idea that we should just stop eating fish out of the oceans. Bluefin tuna have become the modern equivalent of the American bison: we've fished them almost to extinction. Europeans have so decimated the fish stocks off West Africa that the locals are abandoning their homeland for lack of a catch. The once-abundant coho salmon no longer return to spawn in their former numbers on our own west coast. And the list goes on.

I follow the recommendations of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Seafood Watch" program, which is one of several of its kind that list which seafoods they think are sustainable and which to avoid. These days, I wistfully pass the seafood counter at the local Whole Foods, admiring the monkfish, the red snapper, the Chilean seabass--all off limits to me now.

That doesn't mean you can't eat seafood at all. Look lower down the food chain, especially to shellfish, which grow and reproduce much more quickly--and in greater profusion--than large predator fish. A classic Creole gumbo is a perfect treatment. It has just the kind of big flavors I like, and you can add almost anything to it. For this particular gumbo, I used shrimp, scallops, catfish and garlic sausage.

Gumbo starts with roux, which may be familiar to you as the basis of a Bechamel sauce. But the roux for gumbo is cooked longer. For a seafood gumbo, some say the darker the roux the better, until it is almost black. I've explained previously why a long-cooked roux doesn't thicken much. The molecules in the flour are re-arranged, so the roux is more for flavor and appearance.

For six persons, coat the bottom of a heavy pot or Dutch oven with canola oil and over high heat brown 1/2-pound Kielbasa sausage, cut into slices on an angle. Remove the sausage and lightly brown 1/2-pound sea scallops, which may need to be cut in half or into quarters if they are very large. Remove the scallops, lower the heat to moderately-low and add 1/2 cup canola oil. Stir in 1/2 cup all-purpose flour. Cook, stirring frequently, until the roux is dark brown. Do not let it burn. This could take a half-hour or more.

To the cooked roux add 1 small onion, peeled and diced small, 1 green bell pepper, seeded and diced small, 2 stalks celery, cleaned and diced small, and 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped. Cook until the onions begin to soften, about 10 minutes. Add a handful chopped parsley, 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, 1 bay leaf, 1/2 teaspoons salt and a generous pinch black pepper to the pot, as well as the browned sausage. Pour in 4 cups stocks. This can be made with shells from your shrimp or from fish racks (skeletons) purchased from the fish monger, or use a store-bought seafood stock. I used a home-made chicken stock that was rich with flavor. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook for about 20 minutes, or until the gumbo is aromatic and flavorful.

Just before serving, add 1/2-pound deveined jumbo shrimp, the scallops and 1/2-pound catfish fillet, cut into pieces, and cook just until the seafood is cooked through. Adjust seasonings, ladle gumbo over rice, such as a brown Basmati rice, and serve hot, with a flourish, perhaps garnished with more chopped parsley.

Note: The Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Seafood Watch" program advises to avoid imported shrimp and select wild-caught or farmed shrimp from the U.S. or Canada, with wild-caught shrimp from Oregon and British Columbia listed as the "best" choice. Avoid wild-caught sea scallops from the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and any kind of imitation scallop. Choose either wild-caught sea scallops from the Northeast or farmed bay scallops. Farmed U.S. channel catfish are the best choice, but other kinds of imported farmed catfish can be substituted.

Turning Roux into Gumbo

By the time you've finished reading the last two posts, you should be fully equipped to rush out and buy enough seafood to make your own New Orleans-style gumbo.

At least, that is my hope. But first, to finish this business of roux.

I was intrigued to read Paul Prudhomme's comment that dark and even "black" roux are "best to use in gumbos because the darkest roux result in the thinnest, best-tasting gumbos of all."

Everyone is familiar with roux as a thickener in the French bechamel sauce: First create a roux by cooking equal amounts of flour and oil (possibly butter) until the flour loses its raw flavor. Then add milk. Creole and Cajun cooking take roux to a whole other level, toasting the flour to various shades of brown or almost black to impart flavor and color, along with thickening the sauce or stew.

What puzzled me was Prudhomme's observation that the darkest roux are not only the best-tasting, but also the thinnest. Being enormous of girth, Prudhomme may have a special affinity for thin roux just on general principles. But there's more to it than that. My own experiences with gumbo correspond to Prudhomme's: No matter how much flour and oil I mix, the darker I cook it, the thinner my gumbo gets.

What's that about?

I thought this question merited a scientific explanation. So I cracked open my copy of Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (completely revised and updated version). Under "roux," McGee not only observes that darker roux impart a toasty flavor, he goes on to explain why the darkest roux make the thinnest gumbos.

Heating for long periods, McGee says, causes some of the starch chains in the flour to split, then form new bonds with each other. "This generally means that long chains and branches are broken down into smaller pieces that then form short branches on other molecules. The short, branched molecules are less efficient at thickening liquids than the long chains..."

McGee continues, "The darker the roux, the more starch chains are modified in this way, and so the more roux is required to create a given thickness. It takes more of a dark brown roux than a light one to thicken a given amount of liquid."

Hence, rule #1 for gumbo: Make a dark roux for seafood, but don't expect it to be particularly thick. The darker you make it, the more flour and oil you'll need to thicken it.

Having read virtually all of the gumbo recipes in my library, I have the sense that thickness is a matter of personal preference where gumbo is concerned. To make a gumbo for 10 persons, I've seen recipes that call for as little as a few tablespoons of roux, as in original Creole versions, to two cups of roux (meaning one cup oil, one cup flour) or more in various Cajun versions.

I think Prudhomme's recipe is close to optimal. In his version of a seafood gumbo with Andouille sausage he calls for 1 1/2 cups dark roux (3/4 cup oil, 3/4 cup flour) to feed 10 persons. I would procede as follows:

In a heavy stew pot or Dutch oven, bring 3/4-cup canola oil to almost smoking over moderately high heat. Reduce heat to moderately low and slowly stir in 3/4-cup all-purpose flour and cook, stirring frequently until the roux is a dark brown. This could take an hour, so:

While keeping one eye on the roux, shell and devein 1 pound medium U.S. shrimp, either wild-caught or farmed, reserving the shells. Refrigerate the shrimp. Place the shells and 5 cups water in a pot. Bring to a boil and cook, partially covered, for about 20 minutes.

While the shrimp stock is cooking, cut into small dice one large yellow onion, three stalks celery and two green bell peppers. Peel and finely chop 5 garlic cloves. Set aside.

Cut 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken thighs (prefereably pasture-raised) into bite-sized pieces. Refrigerate.

Cut 1 pound Andouille sausage or Kielbasa into bite-sized pieces. Set aside.

When the roux has reached the desired color, the onion, celery, green bell pepper and garlic normally would be added and cooked in the roux until tender. I'm not sure if the roux picks up added flavor this way, or if this method simply avoids messing another pot. I favor cooking the vegetables in a separate pan with a splash of canola oil and some salt, then adding the cooked vegetables to the roux.

While the roux and vegetable mixture is hot, pour the finished shrimp stock into the pot through a strainer and stir to blend. Add the sausage, the chicken, 2 bay leaves, 1/2 cup chopped parsley and 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme at this point. Season with salt (about 1 teaspoon) and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Cook for about 30 minutes, or until quite flavorful. If more liquid is needed, add chicken stock or seafood stock.

The gumbo can be made to this point and refrigerated a day or two ahead. (If you find a layer of oil at the top of the mix, skim it off.) Just before serving, heat the gumbo until it begins to bubble, then add the peeled shrimp and 1 pound of crab backfin meat. Cook another minute or two, or until the shrimp are cooked through.

To serve, distribute cooked brown basmati rice in shallow bowls and ladle generous portions of gumbo over the rice. Hearty greens, well cooked and seasoned with red wine vinegar, can be spooned into the bowl as a side.

Serve with French bread and a nice Beaujolais wine.

How Do You Make Your Roux?

I've been making lots of gumbo lately. But not being from the State of Louisiana, I hesitate to post my gumbo recipe because I have some questions of my own.

For instance, why is such a big deal made of browning the roux that thickens the gumbo?

Is that a Creole thing, or a Cajun thing?

And while we're at it, what's the difference between Creole and Cajun?

A recent work assignment took me to the Caribbean island of Anguilla. I brought along three different Jessica Harris cookbooks, thinking I would be cooking island food. Even though I didn't cook a lot of island food in the end, I spent some time re-acquainting myself with Harris' take on Creole cuisine.

Harris has made a life's work of tracing and recording the confluence of African and European cooking in the Americas. Gumbo, for instance, derives from an African word for okra. Hence, okra is a star vegetable in the gumbo lexicon. (And, no, okra doesn't have to be slimy--it can just be good.)

The term "creole" was adopted by descendants of Europeans who were born in the New World, especially in the Caribbean and in New Orleans, but also farther South into parts of South America and even Mexico.

"The people of this Creole world have a common history and many similarities in taste, but each has brought something different to Creole cuisines," writes Harris in Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food from the Atlantic Rim. "Influences from France, Spain, Holland, Denmark, Portugal, and England mingled with those of the Yoruba in Brazil; the Ashanti, Fanti, and Denkiera in Jamaic; the Wolof in New Orleans; the Toucouleur, Igbo, Ewe, Fon, Kru, Hausa, Kalabari, Songye and more. The native ingredients of the American cross-pollinated, literally and figuratively, with those brought to the Americas from Europe, Asia and Africa and went into the dutchies, iron pots, coui, and canaris of the New World."

"Cajun," meanwhile, refers to French Acadians who had settled parts of Nova Scotia, but were forced into exile in the 18th Century after France ceded the territory to Great Britain. Being mostly Catholic, the Acadians were not embraced on the East Coast, and sought out kindred spirits in Louisiana.

There is so much overlap between Creole and Cajun cooking it's easy to confuse the two, although Creole is viewed as the more metropolitan, Cajun more country kitchen.

French being equivalent to haute cuisine, the roux as a sauce base was bound to play a role in Creole and Cajun. But that still doesn't explain the peculiar habit of roasting the flour in the oil until it turns various shades of brown, to almost black.

My own feeling, reinforced by a reading of numerous texts, including The Picayune's Creole Cook Book, is that roux was used sparingly as a thickener in Creole dishes, but came to play a much more prominent role in the countrified dishes of the Cajuns.

"The cooking of flour and fat together to make a roux is a process that seems to go back as far as my ancestors of four hundred years ago," writes Paul Prudhomme in Chef Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen. "Traditionally, the fat used was animal fat, though today various oils are used, and the roux was, and often still is, made by very slow cooking. For example, when I was a boy, my mother used to start with a paste of animal fat and flour and cook it for several hours."

A roux cooked to a dark brown imparts the same kind of flavor as, say, a baked bread. That flavor, sought after by chefs and the prepared food industry, owes to the so-called Maillard reaction, in which carbohydrates and amino acids form strange, flavorful compounds when exposed to heat.

"The basic reason for making a roux," says Prudhomme, "is for the distinctive taste and texture it lends to food. This roux taste and texture is characteristic of many dishes that Louisiana Cajuns make."

It was not uncommon for cooks to make batches of roux and store it for use as needed. But not all roux are created equal. Some are darker than others, depending on the dish being prepared.

"In general, light and medium-brown roux are used in sauces or gravies for dark, heavy meats such as beef, with game such as elk and venison, and with dark-meat fowl such as duck, geese and blackbirds," Prudhomme writes. "They give a wonderful, toasted nutty flavor--just the right enhancement to these sauces and gravies. Dark red-brown and black roux are used in sauces and gravies for sweet, light, white meats such as pork, rabbit, veal, and all kinds of freshwater and saltwater fish and shellfish..."

Prudhomme says that "black roux are best to use in gumbos because the darkest roux result in the thinnest, best-tasting gumbos of all," but he warns that "it takes practice to make black roux without burning them, and dark red-brown roux are certainly acceptable for any gumbo."

These darker roux are what Emerill would refer to as the two-beer or three-beer roux--meaning, your left hand is hardly idle while the right hand is stirring the roux. Prudhomme, being a restaurant cook and having no time for leisurely ale swilling, found a way to make a dark roux without burning it in 500-degree oil

We will take the more leisurely approach when we make our roux and assemble our gumbo tomorrow. Stay tuned....