More comfort food. At its best, progressive/avant garde/molecular/modern cuisine is comfort food, in its effects, if not its presentation. For me, "comfort food" in the sense the term is ordinarily used, is "weekday food." Although I incorporate modern cooking knowledge into traditional preparations, I mostly cook the sort of food that my grandmother would at least have some idea how to do. I might get fancier, or more elaborate, or spend more time on dishes than my mother or grandmother would, but the techniques and ingredients of my weekday food are still very recognizable to them.

With certain techniques, on the other hand, and some dishes into which they're incorporated, Grandma wouldn't have a clue how to make it, wouldn't recognize the processes as things that happen in a kitchen, and, when it's not done right, wouldn't enjoy eating the dishes that are produced from those techniques.

In the case of etouffee, it's a very traditional dish. There's nothing unfamiliar about it. It is definitely comfort food in every sense. But I still know now, from Harold McGee, that in order to combine the stock into the roux, I need to add the stock slowly. Contrary to hundreds of recipes saying that the stock needs to be cold, or that the stock needs to be hot, the temperature just doesn't matter. You just have to add the stock slowly, while whisking. Science can help even the oldest dishes.

I love Cajun food. I also love faux-Cajun dishes, Creole dishes, and New Orleans dishes. These are some of my comfort food. I first had etouffee cooked by some distant relatives from New Orleans. Ever since then, it was one of my favorite dishes, one of the dishes I'd beg my mom to make. And after leaving the house, it's been one of my go-to dishes. I don't make it the same way my mom made it (from a box), or the same way my relatives made it (with fresh crawfish but canned stock), I've got my own method. I don't have access to crawfish, but I can get beautiful, head-on gulf shrimp to make shrimp stock. The dish would still be very recognizable to them.

Anyway, I posted about etouffee a couple years ago. At that time, I tried to provide a recipe. Then, a year or two ago, I changed the recipe on the site, since I didn't really follow it that way anymore (and wasn't sure whether I ever did). The most recent time I made etouffee, I paid a lot of attention to how much of each ingredient I was adding and realized it was completely different again. So I'm not going to provide another recipe, or modify the old one. I'm just going to say that a lot of things get made by feel, and this is one of them. I make it differently every time. Etouffee is a big tent. This time, it involved the following:

• Make shrimp stock.
• Brown slices of andouille. Reserve sausage. Deglaze with shrimp stock.
• Make a roux, cook it until it's about the color of a penny.
• Add sausage, and diced bell peppers, onion, and celery.
• Stir in stock slowly, while whisking.
• Cook it down until it's the consistency of a gravy.
• Add peeled shrimp and turn off the heat. Stir for another minute or so, then serve over rice.
• Add some chopped scallions, if you like.

Posted by Barzelay on 2009/01/24 @ 14:02 | Comments (0) | Comfort Food

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