Let's just say that I feel lucky -- lucky to have cajun ancestors, lucky to have a Dad that taught me to fish and still fishes and shrimps the Louisiana coast, and lucky that some of those delicacies find their way up to Chicago, where I met my wife and I'm raising a family.
Having kids made me stop taking my heritage for granted, especially because my wife's ancestry is a yawn-inducing German/English combination that manifests itself gastronomically as an exceptionally dry and flavorless piece of bread called stollen*. You’ll get more enjoyment from eating a styrofoam ice chest. I suspect it's called stollen because the only way you'd eat it is if you had to steal to feed your family.
On the other end of the gene pool, my background gives them crawfish boils, fish fries (no "fish boils," ewww), gumbo, andouille, boudin, Mardi Gras (spent part of my childhood in Metairie, I mean, Metry), The Balfa Brothers, the rest of cajun music, salt and freshwater fishing, LSU Tigers, Evangeline (we have relatives buried in a St. Martinsville cemetery) and enough extended family weddings and gatherings to keep the bar at a VFW hall staffed full-time.
Someday, my kids will ask me to stop talking about those things, to stop asking them to try new foods ("You dip the raw oyster in ketchup and horseradish so it awakens your taste buds AND clears your sinuses."), to stop telling them that Dewey Balfa said, "I think we speak French and [the French] speak Parisian," to stop sharing memories of attending LSU, and stop reminding them about the richness and beauty of the cajun culture that is their heritage. Until then, I’m over-sharing like a computer geek in a room full of runway models.
And that includes introducing them to foods their north-of-the-Manson-Nixon line schoolmates have only seen on the Food Network.
Recently, my parents made the trip up north and brought an ice chest full of the good stuff: boudin and andouille from Benoit's Meatblock, fileted catfish and speckled trout, a couple of packages of crawfish tails and a few tupperware containers of frozen shrimp that my Dad caught earlier this year.
I've made gumbos and red beans and rice, tried a few Zatarains and Louisiana-brand packaged dishes, but never tried to make an etouffee. From scratch. It just seemed too difficult, too time-consuming, too delicious to even conceptualize as a food that could be created in a house mostly filled with, dare I say -- dare, dare -- northerners, even if some had cajun blood in them.
But, I had these two packages of crawfish tails and didn’t want to just dump them on a salad. That felt almost criminal to consider.
So, a week ago, I made a crawfish etouffee, mostly following a simple Emerill recipe I found online.
It was good -- much better than I expected it to be -- and didn't require as much effort as I thought.
My wife even said, "You can make more of that any time you want."
So, this week, in possession of Gulf shrimp, a half a stalk of celery, and half a mind to cook something more difficult, I went after shrimp etouffee. And it seemed like the right opportunity to share a cooking experience with the fine folks at ATVS.
I started by thawing and peeling the shrimp, the latter of which I did on my front porch, because it seemed the right and honorable thing to do.
When I showed the peeled shrimp to my oldest son, he said, "It smells like Louisiana." That’s my boy. :)
I took the shells, some onion, celery, garlic, lemon juice, tabasco, and Tony Chechere's and started a shrimp stock, improvising from another Emerill recipe. I didn’t use the carrots -- I didn’t have any and the idea of carrots in my shrimp stock made me uneasy. I like carrots, but it seemed akin to adding steak to your bowl of breakfast cereal.
I assembled the rest of the ingredients and cut the vegetables before starting the roux.
Then I made my roux, which took a lot longer this time because I didn't set the heat high enough.
I got the roux to a cafe au lait color in about 10 minutes, but I had to boost the heat to get it to the caramel/peanut butter color. In discussion with Mom about it afterwards, she said it’s better to start off with a low heat and turn it up then start off high and have to turn it down. The latter will result in burned roux.
Then I added the vegetables, cooked them until the onions started to get translucent, and then added a quart of the shrimp stock. I let all that simmer for 45 minutes and it thickened up very nicely.
About 10 minutes before I served it, I added the shrimp, which I had only lightly coated with Tony's.
There’s a lot to feel lucky about and to be thankful for in life, not the least of which is eating out of bowls that my Mom sent us to properly serve cajun dishes like gumbo and etouffee.
My northern relatives, bless their hearts, don’t have specials bowls for stollen. They eat it out of the box, slice it with a hacksaw (kidding; I kid; I’m a kidder) and serve it with very large glass of milk.
Borrrrrinnnnng.
We’ve been eating that etouffee all week. I even made a shrimp etouffee omelette, which tasted so good I made it again the next day.
Today, we finished the rest of it. I had some at work for lunch; my wife had it for dinner. And we’re already talking about when we’ll make it again.
A few final thoughts:
While trying to cook it so it doesn't overwhelm my wife and make it inaccessible to my kids because of too much spice, I erred on the side of not enough spice. All the flavors one would expect were there, but they were subtle. Almost too subtle. So, more spice when cooking future shrimp etouffees.
My wife's taste buds are changing. A few years ago, she had a typical yankee response to my cajun food -- too many flavors happening at once. Now she eats andouille and brie on a cracker, enjoys gumbo as much as anyone should, and agreed that the shrimp etouffee needed more spice.
This post was inspired by the fine folks at ATVS, who share their food and beverage experiences with their readers, and my kids, who are taught to raise their hands and politely correct their teacher when she refers to our attractive and delicious mudbugs as "cray-fish."