Jackson Jambalaya

Eat dirt Al Gore. You helped me almost none at all back then. Maybe I deserved it because I never voted for you. However, I think I knew all along that you were a big Tennessee Talker and not much more than that.

Way back when, if thirty-five (+-) years ago qualifies for way back when, there was a Cajun/Creole restaurant on the east side of Ridgewood Road in Jackson, just a few blocks north of Adkins Blvd. I think the name was either Cajun Kitchen or Creole Kitchen. Anyhow, we liked their food, especially their Crawfish Etouffee. After getting home after the second time we dined with them, I decided there had to be some way to match their recipe. A few days later, we returned, with me determined to reverse engineer my bowl of etouffee. When we got there, there was an “out of business” sign in the door. This is just another example of the bad things I have encountered during my life.

Back then, Google did not exist. I guess Al Gore never thought about a search engine for the masses when he built the internet. My PC had a dial up phone modem. The machine ran at a blinding fast 640 K. It was an IBM clone with two 5.25 inch floppy disks and a DOS operating system. I built the machine using parts I ordered from JDR Micro Devices. 

My word processor was WordStar, which fit on a 5.25 inch floppy with enough room left over for quite a few document files. Computers have changed a lot since then.

Anyhow, with no google (Thanks for nothing, Al Gore), getting a recipe for etouffee was difficult. I had a Justin Wilson cookbook back then, but did not like his recipe. What I came up was OK, but not the same. After several years of wishing Creole Kitchen would reopen, I finally hit a recipe that is nearly identical to a hundred similar recipes google will now send you to in 3.2 nanoseconds. Thanks for nothing Al Gore.

Etouffee is a Cajun and Creole dish of seafood in a thick, aromatic gravy served over rice. The name comes from the French word étouffée, which means "to smother".

Here are some characteristics of an etouffee:

Etouffees are typically made with seafood like shrimp or crawfish, but can also be made with chicken or other proteins. The dish includes onions, bell peppers, celery, garlic, hot sauce, and Creole seasonings. To borrow an old Louisiana chef's comment, “First you make a roux.” At that point, the dish is made by sautéing and simmering the ingredients together. A light (pale brown) roux is a key component that thickens the sauce and gives it a nutty flavor.

Etouffee is typically served over a mound of white rice and garnished with sliced green onions.

Here is how I make my Crawfish Etouffee

Crawfish Etouffee

Ingredients:

3/4 stick butter
1 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped bell pepper
12 ounces peeled crawfish tails
1/8 teaspoon ground bay leaves
1 1/2 Tablespoon flour
2 cups Chicken broth
1/4 cup White wine
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons Slap Ya Momma Cajun Seasoning
1 teaspoon La Gold Hot Sauce, or your brand. Sadly, I understand LA Gold is no longer sold.
1 Tablespoon minced garlic
1 Tablespoon Green Onion, sliced

For the Rice

1/2 cup rice
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon Butter

Directions:

To cook rice, add water, salt, and butter to rice. Bring to a boil in microwave at 100 percent power (Takes about 5 minutes). Add lid, set power to 20 percent and cook for 15 minutes. Remove and fluff with a fork.

For the Etouffee:

Prep Vegetables.

Melt the butter in a nonstick skillet over medium - high heat. Add flour, salt, black pepper, and sauté until golden (10-12 minutes).

Add the onions, celery, and bell pepper. Sauté until the vegetables are tender. Toward the end, add the garlic.

Reduce the heat to medium. Add the Chicken broth, stir and add 1 Tablespoon of Tomato Paste, LA Gold Hot Sauce, Cajun Seasoning, and Liquid Crab Boil. I have had people question why I add the liquid Crab Boil. I do that because I like the way it tastes. I add it when I make Shrimp gumbo, too.

I like to cook the sauce for 30-45 minutes at a simmer, stirring occasionally.

I taste tested the sauce in this etouffee three times, over a little rice, during the simmer, to assure I was as happy as possible before adding my crawfish. What made the difference? I forgot to add my ground Bay Leaves.

When I was happy with my sauce, I turned the heat to the lowest setting and added my (Thawed, but still cool) crawfish. And allowed the completed dish to sit with a lid for a bit. A word about Crawfish I like packaged frozen crawfish, BUT NOT FROM CHINA. They do everything they can do to sneak their crawfish into the market, hoping dumb dumb dumb people will buy them. If you have you will understand what I mean when I say Chinese crawfish taste like ditch water. I would not feed them to a dog. If they come from China, the USDA requires that notice printed somewhere on the package, so look very carefully if you buy them frozen.

Serve the etouffee over rice, with a bit of sliced green onion.

Enjoy.

Thanks for looking at my post.
God Bless you.