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.

Spanish Siesta

When asking a Spanish friend of mine when they'd usually eat a hearty meal like paella they told me usually in the late afternoon on Sunday with their friends and family. Since I have no family out here and my friends are all the family I got out here, I invited some of mis amigos cercanos over. If you're unfamiliar with paella, as I became aware of as I asked dozens about it this past week, it's a Spanish one dish meal consisting of saffron-flavored rice, meat/poultry and seafood. Saffron is one of the most expensive spices as the flowers it comes from, a crocus, only produces 3 threads. It is very hard to describe the flavor as it is so complex but many describe it as either bitter to semi-sweet and earthy. You'll want to buy it as threads, but it also comes powdered and if you live near a Cost Plus World Market, buy them there because that store sells insanely cheap spices that are of very high quality. (Also, when there pick up some smoked paprika, you'll need that as well.) Do not use a wooden spoon as it will absorb the flavor of the saffron. The dish calls for Spanish Valencia (Valencia is the region paella was born) rice which is a high starch short grain rice that I couldn't find so I replaced it with a sweet chinese rice which met those requirements. A short grain with high starch will make a mushy, sticky consistency. Since saffron is pricey, you may opt to use little (a couple of pinches), but since I was cooking a large serving of rice and I wanted it to taste extra scrumptious I used quite a bit.
For my recipes I would be using red bell pepper, tomatoes, and a jalapeno pepper which I sliced open and mixed with chopped basil and thyme, all fresh from my garden, and dredged with extra virgin olive oil, which I then marinated together overnight in my fridge. After dicing up the tomaters I sauteed them 

with fresh oil and the marinated basil. Make sure all the juice of the tomaters are used because you wanna cook the whole thang until all the liquid burns off and you get a syrupy collaboration of flavors. That will be added to the dish later.

Go ahead and saute a medium sized onion with shallots, all diced, in oil (the oil I marinaded in before, with the bits of thyme still in it and some of the basil) and add your water which will be used for the rice and bring it to a boil. This will make a broth for the rice to soak up all the flavors. If you were using chicken (which is a very traditional ingredient), I didn't, you'd want to cook the chicken in the oil as well to make it a chicken broth. I wanted to make sure I had a lot of food for everyone and leftovers so I made 6 cups of rice to 12 cups water. As long as you do a 1:2, w/v (rice:water) ratio you should be fine. The rice can cook for a long ass time because it's so starchy which is good because I had to cook it forever to tenderize the chorizo. Chorizo is something I haven't cooked before and apparently the good stuff, like I bought, is very tough and uncooked. If I do this again, I'm going to cook the chorizo on the side first and then add it to the rice after it's well cooked. 

Now, traditionally you're supposed to use a paellera, a round shallow cooking pan designed specifically for paella. They range from 25 to 100 bucks depending on quality. But I'm a college student so, yeah, fuck that. However if you're a purist, go for it and serve your guests out of it.
For seafood I steamed mussels which should come closed (denoting their alive) and open (denoting their fully cooked/dead) when steamed. Just steam them in a covered skillet with water for about 5 minutes. I recommend cutting them free from their shells and drizzling some fresh lime over them. There is a lot to consider with mussels so you may want to do your research on them. Speaking of which I have a side note. Although they're supposed to be closed, I bought them at a respectable market where I got all my seafood (99 ranch market, an asian market) and they were sold in a water bath and they were all fully open. Which struck me as odd but even after sitting in my fridge overnight (make sure to put them in a collander covered with a wet paper towel or in the bag w/ a hole cut in it so they can breath) they still smelled one hundred percent fresh. And after cooking them, they tasted - again - fresh. So I guess if they were dead they weren't for too long and kept for a good time, which I hear is what 99 Ranch Market is known for. So I highly recommend them. 
Also, for seafood, I was recommended red snapper. A friend I was cooking for wanted a whole fish in the dish so the fish's essential oils and flavors would soak into the rice. I rarely cook with fish, but fortunately the fishmonger knew that snapper was the right choice - it was by the way - very light and creamy, perfect for this dish. They took care of the gill situation, degutted, descaled and removed the tail. I kept the head though because with most seafood that's where all the flavor is and also the cheeks are the best part. I placed the fish, whole in, into the rice when all the top water disappeared (which should be when it's pretty hot). (This is also when I added the smoked paprika - which was from Spain! (a couple of tablespoons), saffron, and the tomatoe mixture) Apparently it was hot because the sucker was fully cooked in about 10 minutes. 

Getting it out is tricky because the heat will practically dissolve it and you'll probably be fishing out fish bones. Scrap out all the meaty bits including what you can scrounge from the head, as the paella keeps cooking. Now I didn't do this because I was kinda in a flurry from all the millions of things I was doing at once, but you can serve a guest(s) the eyeballs and cheeks.
I also bought a pound of large shrimp (technically not prawns, but you can get those instead if you want something really big). There are tons of ways to prepare shrimp. I like to remove the shells by pinching off the tail at the tip and peeling off the 2-3 panels that remain. Then I devein the poop, only because some get squeamish about that shit. But in their defense that shit can get pretty murky/sedimenty tasting and throw off the dish's flavor so it's probably best to just remove it. Then I gently pop off the head shell, but keep all the head gunk because like I said that's where all the flavor is. Yummy! I marinaded that for about 2 to 3 hours in chili garlic sauce (rooster sauce) and 

oil. Yeah, there's a LOT of oil in this recipe. Sautee for about 5 mins or until the shrimp are fully cooked. Set aside the cooked shrimp, fish and mussels. Add them when the rice is to your liking and the chorizo is just right. Then just add all the seafood, mix it up a spell and you're ready to serve. I recommend a peppery or fruity red wine that has a bold flavor to compete with the dish. Many recommend Spanish wines from the Rioja region. But no one seemed to care about the wines (me neither). Everyone was pretty syked about the sangria concotion I invented. So here's the recipe for that fan favorite:
1 part Madria Sangria 
2 part Hawaii's Own Paradise Punch (follow the instructions on the can)
1/2 part Perrier Lemon
I kept that in the freezer for several hours to make it into a slushie which I *highly* recommend.

Serve with french baguettes to soak up all the juicy flavors. I refuse to slice bread so my friends can break bread with me.


I served this with a side dish commonly used in Spain: ham, veggies and oil. Yeah they like their oil and meats in case you haven't figured that out yet. I marinaded a cubed Virginia ham (Serrano is prefered) in oil and garlic. 

VIRGINIA HAM!!!!!

I also marinaded the sliced red bells mentioned earlier with sugar snap peas and thrice sliced asparagus. 

Apparently it's common to steam and then skillet cook veggies in Spain so I did that. I have good days and bad with asparagus because the tip cooks so readily and the fat part takes forever and has a hard, waxy, slivery texture when uncooked. And I don't want to overcook the tips just to get the fat parts edible. So let me know if you have a special way to cook these bastards. I think the ham was smoked (even though it wasn't labeled as such) because it cooked super quick so be very careful if you use Virginia *smoked* ham. It will be super salty, fatty in parts, but oh Lordy so flavorful. I added the water from the steaming part of the recipe because as I mentioned the asparagus butts were being stubborn and I was afraid of overcooking the ham. That way the ham would stay moist and the asparagus could boil. No one seemed to notice and it came out nice. I debated about adding walnuts to the dish, so that may be a consideration.

For dessert I did something very light because everyone's gonna be exhausted and super full from the food. I had a bowl of strawberries, sour cream, and brown sugar. You dip a strawberry in the cream and then dip it in sugar. My family used to do this alot. I'm glad I did that. I almost served blueberries in milk with sugar. A friend recommended nuking the brown sugar for like 15 secs if it gets clumpy. So that's a pro tip.


I wanna thank all my friends that I invited. I hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to post your thoughts, questions, advice/pointers. You can post as Anonymous if you so desire.

¡Buen provecho!