Ragin Cajun!

I did my undergrad in the dirty south (Go Trojans!) and ran a conference in New Orleans (pre-Katrina) and fell in love with that area. Ever since, I've been dabbling in Creole/Cajun cuisine. Recently, I stumbled upon

Loovvveee the LA trees. Such character!

some boxes of Tony Chacere's (yay!) Gumbo at the 99 cents only store and hadta pick it up since I never made gumbo yet. I used two boxes which makes about two cups and added another two cups extra long grain rice and double amount water and threw all that in a rice cooker. Turned out well. I'm glad I threw in the rice to cover up that insane amount of seasoning/salt. Made it that much more edible and not overly salty.

As I mentioned before, Louisiana cooking can be either Cajun or Creole. For gumbo, Creoles will do it as a soup while Cajuns will do it as a stew. I actually ended up doing it my own way, by cooking the ingredients seperately and piling them together. I wanted the flavors to meld together in the bite you form on the fork and evolve the flavors separately. I haveta admit though, because I didn't do a considerable background study on how to cook gumbo I didn't know about the difference in cooking styles. I did this mainly because I like to adhere to my improv rules and also add my own flair. For my dish, I ended up organically making a rice dish, pan fried catfish, a veggie/sausage platter, and a sauce. As a side note, for any Creole/Cajun cooking you must utilize the Holy Trinity: celery, onions, and bell peppers. I exchanged onion with shallot only because I have an insane amount and I really like them because they blend onion with garlic - yum!

When you make a gumbo, you will most likely top it off with a sauce called roux. There are two types of roux: Creole or Cajun. The former is with butter and flour and the latter with lard/oil and flour. I cooked Creole by melting the butter first (my roomie gave me a great tip: you can also roast the flour by itself first until it gets dark and then add the fat) and added equal portions of flour. You need to cook fairly low heats and stir constantly. I had to bounce back and forth and add more butter/flour. I should've added more butter (although I did end up using about a 1.5:1, fat:flour ratio) because it was still too floury. I also tossed in some Cajun seasonings to add flavor. You will see as you cook it that it moves in stages (as shown in the pics) and evolves into a burned black goo. Which is what you want, the roux needs to be burned like it's damned! At some point, when it reaches the brown stage it'll smell like popcorn. It stayed brown for me until I added celery and then it instantly turned chocolate black. That might be from the water in the celery? It still tasted funky so I added a load of honey. It ended up tasting tolerable (too thick and floury, but a tinge of sweetness and barely any spice except for a lingering aftertaste), but I want to make it much better the next time I cook it. Not bad for my first time, however and tastes fine with everything else, but still brings the dish down a little bit.

Since I can't cook without drinking, I had to make myself a thematic drink (to accompany my New Orleans jazz playing on Pandora). Since I couldn't find an appropriate Southern beer and none of the whiskeys caught my fancy I just did a mix I was turned on by a friend awhile back...Seagram's Sweet Tea Vodka mixed with Arnold Palmer's Sweet Tea and Lemonade. It's quite good although may need tonic to lighten it up. Be careful, it'll sneak up on ya!

It had a bizarre cascade effect after blending with ice.

For the main meat I chose Louisiana-borne catfish from a local Asian market. When choosing a catfish, I was told this great tip: pick the scumsucker with a small head (very key!) and a fat (wide) body. Catfish are notorious for having long slender bodies that offer little meat so you want a small head/big body so you get more meat. As with all fish, check the gills to make sure they look healthy (rich red not faded brick) and the eyes aren't cloudy. Make sure the skin is metallic and shiny and it smells like clean water, maybe faintly cucumberish. I had mine gutted (another tip: you may want to keep the guts because there may be eggs, but I'm not pro enough to know how to cook fish eggs) and cleaned (de-finned, but head left on) and cut in steaks. I prefer this method (steak) because all you have to do is cut on either side of the central bone and

From bottom left, clockwise: catfish steak that can be cut in half on opposite sides of the central bone; cubed portions of the steak; fish steaks that have little to no meat that can still be cooked but not for this dish.

you get chunks of meat to work with. But I'm getting ahead of myself (spoiler alert), I marinaded the fish steaks in an insane amount of olive oil, salt/pepper, american and chinese okra, shallots and garden fresh tomaters, green bells, and basil for two hours in the freezer. Then I chopped the steaks into cubes. I found

Okra! Chinese (left) American (right)

there were parts of the fish that were way too much work to cut (and had those notorious bits that weren't that fleshy) so I saved them to cook with at some later date. I pan fried the cubes. Now, thankfully since I

From left to right: Tomaters, basil and green bells fresh picked from my garden; shallots and okra added; Catfish added; Oil, salt/pepper added and massive shaking!

marinaded them for so long they were so tender that I needn't worry too much about overcooking them. You can cook them with pink bits if you want, but I prefer white all the way through which ended up making them very juicy and hella fluffy. With the soaking, they smelled like marinade but tasted like fish which I was totally surprised by. One of the great things about improv cooking. I marinaded to push out the fishy flavors, but the reverse happened and I turned out to like the unlikely. There were flaky bits left in the oily mess in the cast iron so I burned all that off into vodka (there's a *term* for this but I can't recall what it is! please comment if you know!) and poured the flavorful liquid goodness over the fish.

Since there were obviously some left over oily veggies I simmered them (covered) with chopped Johnsonville smoked beef hot links that had jalapeno and red pepper. Those added a nice heat to the dish as I didn't end

up using any hot sauces or spicy seasonings. Surprising, right!? That completed the gumbo cooking adventure. I made a rice bed and covered it with the veggie/sausage spread and topped it with the fish and then the roux. The final mixture was quite delish! A unique blend of flavors and textures which is why I cooked them separately. I'm glad it ended heterogenous and not homogenous which I think might've happened with a soup or stew.

Garden Fresh One Dish Meal

Hanging out with some of my buddies we wanted to make some grub using mostly fresh ingredients from the garden. My homie suggested an old family recipe mixing ground beef into a hollowed out summer squash. This is a one dish meal that can be modified around these two base ingredients. From the garden we used onion, garlic, habanero, bell pepper, arugula, and kale mixed in with the ground beef which was browned on medium heat in a skillet. We also added a healthy amount of bread crumbs to soak up all the greasy flavorings exuded from the meat.

Since this meal can be effectively baked for an extended time in the oven, it isn't an issue if you are dealing with an over-ripe squash, which we were dealing with. To prepare the squash, just slice it lenghtwise and scoop out the majority of the innards, but leave a decent amount of the flesh covering the rind. You will need that squash flesh later in the recipe. Go ahead and slather that bad boy with olive oil and place the beef/veggie mix into the core.

Sprinkle cheese over the top of the stuffed squash and bake at 350 for at least 20 minutes. You can always cook it for longer until the squash is tender if it's over-ripe. You may just need to lower the heat down to 300 or lower and bake for an extended period. You may also want to cover it in this case to prevent the meat from drying out too much, however the bread crumbs should prevent this from happening. When the dish is done you can scoop out that flesh you didn't remove along with all the stuffed ingredients and set them aside.

Just put all the scoopings back into the squash shell and enjoy! Removing more of the squash and mixing it in with the beef will make it more moist and add a nice stringy texture to the dish. It's very filling and has an outstanding savory flavor.