First, You Make Some Roux...

I've mentioned a roux ("roo") several times in recent posts and a reader asked me if I could give a little more how to information. Here is a series of photos that I took Saturday.

The thing to note is that nothing much happens in the first ten or twelve minutes of cooking and then all hell breaks loose in the last five minutes. Your strict attention during the last few minutes is critical.

Time Zero. I put one part flour and one part fat (in this case, canola oil; often, duck fat) into the pan over high heat. Here, it's not even mixed yet.

3 Minutes. I took a photo at this point because I want you to look at it. See all the foam and bubbles? That's the water boiling off from the flour. This is why you never want to dump flour into really hot oil. If all this water flashed to steam suddenly, you could end up in the hospital with terrible burns all over your face. Despite what the macho chefs tell you, don't do it. Start with cold oil and flour.

8 Minutes. You can see fewer bubbles and the tiniest hint of color, indicating that the water is finally boiling away.

11 Minutes. Here we are eleven minutes in and things are just getting started. I have been stirring nonchalantly to this point. But things are about to change, quickly.

12 Minutes. Another shade darker in just a minute.

13 Minutes. Now, you see the texture change. Once this happens, you know things are cooking quickly and you'd better ignore all external influences, save the house burning down around you.

14 Minutes. In all the previous photos, the spatula is sitting against the pan. In this photo and all subsequent ones, though you cannot see it, I'm stirring. There's been a significant color change in the last few seconds.

15 Minutes. This is as light brown as I would use for a gumbo. If I were making a general purpose roux to store in the cooler for some future use, I'd be stopping right about here. But, today, I'm making alligator and shrimp gumbo, so I want a dark roux.

16 Minutes. This is a good red brown roux. I'd stop here for duck.

17 Minutes. Look at the smoke coming off of this! It's not black yet in this photo, but it was about 30 seconds after I snapped the photo. I was too busy working with it at the last second to take a final picture. To stop it from cooking, I threw a couple of pounds of trinity (onions, peppers, and celery) into it, then hit it with a gallon of stock.

Here's the final product. I wasn't kidding about it going black in a hurry, was I?

Smothered Quail, et al.

This is the next in the series of recipes from my Low Country Cooking Class last week. Smothered Quail is really just quail that has been browned on all sides and then cooked in a gravy; my family would call this Fried Quail (for whatever reason). This method of cooking is technically a quick braise (though without a lid on the pan) and is my favorite way of cooking rabbit and pork chops.

You might recognize this as the country cousin to an étouffée, from the French verb to smother. A Cajun étouffée is very similar in technique, but the roux is going to be darker and the dish will contain trinity (onions, peppers, and celery) and a lot more seasoning. Once you get comfortable with the technique, try an étouffée.

The method could not be simpler. Season a cup of flour with salt and pepper (sure, add cayenne and dried thyme if you like; you're the cook). Dredge the quail in the flour and then brown on all sides in a large skillet over moderate heat. Be careful not to let the brown bits in the pan burn.

Remove the quail from the pan and add 1/2 cup of the seasoned flour to the pan. You might need to add a little more oil at this point to make a good roux. Once the roux is mixed up well, this would be a good point to add any other flavorings that you might want. For my class, I added a couple of diced Surry sausages. I generally would have added sliced onions too, but for some reason I didn't last Sunday. No matter. Cook the roux until it is light brown, then add as much water as you need to make a nice gravy. Start with a couple of cups and add more as necessary.

Add the quail (rabbit, pork chops, Salisbury steaks, beef paleron steaks, chicken, whatever) to the pan and cook gently until it's tender enough to pierce easily with a fork. When done, season to taste with salt (remember, your roux flour was already seasoned) and pepper. I threw in a good portion of crushed red pepper and a couple teaspoons of fresh thyme too.

I can't eat anything cooked in gravy like this without rice and a big pile of greens.

Low Country Cooking Class

Recently I posted about how much I like to cook Cajun and Creole food. For my latest cooking class/dinner/party, I decided to tackle Cajun's cousin Low Country food, cuisine that's indigenous to the South Carolina coastal plain from Pawley's Island in the north, down to Savannah in the south. I haven't spent much time in this area, but as a Southerner, I have an innate feel for the basics of the cuisine.

Our menu was:

Shrimp and Grits
Pilau
Smothered Quail
Collard Greens
White Chocolate, Caramel and Pecan Bread Pudding

To keep this post from becoming book length, I'm going to give an overview here and deal with each dish on its own in subsequent posts. You can follow the links in the menu above to the article on each dish. And see the post entitled Grits 101 for the basics on grits.

The first thing to know about these dishes and recipes is that they are my own. I've tasted many versions of each of these dishes and these are my versions, informed by my sensibilities and the ingredients available to me in my locale. That is to say that I am treading on some sacred ground here: I'm not a native Sandlapper and I know that your grandmother makes the best version of each of these dishes. People have started small land wars over the "correct" version of shrimp and grits, for goodness sake. I have no wish to be involved in your little wars, so I make no claims about these dishes other than you will enjoy each and every one of them.

My shrimp and grits is made with very coarse grits from Anson Mills in Columbia SC. The all critical sauce for the grits is made from shrimp, shallots, green onions, Surry sausage, garlic, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, loads of fresh thyme, fresh parsley, lemon juice, white wine, and sweet butter. Sure, this is not how your grandmother makes it, but I love it.

I make my pilau in quasi-risotto style; well, maybe I should stop beating around the bush. I make it jambalaya style. I start with a mirepoix of onions, celery, and poblano peppers sautéed with Surry sausage, garlic, fresh thyme, and crushed red pepper flakes. To this I add Carolina Gold rice, tomatoes, salt, pepper, and chicken stock, stirring and adding more stock until the rice is done. I know others insist on having separate grains of rice; that's just not for me. Here's Randy chopping onions for the pilau.

Smothered Quail is what we would call in my family Fried Quail. This is my favorite way of eating both rabbit and pork chops. I dredge the quail in seasoned flour and brown all sides, then remove the quail from the pan, and make a light brown roux from the drippings and additional oil as necessary. Then I add water to make a gravy and put the quail back in and simmer until tender, about 20-30 minutes. Onions and pork products always help the gravy; yesterday we used Surry sausage. I seasoned with salt, pepper, crushed red pepper, and fresh thyme.

I can't eat anything cooked in gravy like this without rice (hence the pilau) and a big pile of greens. My preference is turnip greens (which we call turnip salad), but in the market on Saturday, we had nothing but collards, which also suit me fine. At the restaurant, we chiffonade collards, blanch them, and sauté them quickly in olive oil and garlic. But that just won't do for a good Southern dinner which requires long slow cooking of the greens with smoked pork products.

We ended the meal with a glorious bread pudding, puffed up to almost four inches in height. Here you can see Tim whisking the custard before we added the stale bread to soak. Into the mix went caramel, white chocolate, pecans, and the guts of a vanilla bean. Quipped one of the jokers in attendance, "A vanilla bean is what we use when we run out of vanilla extract!"

You've seen the photos of some of the husbands in the class at work, but none of the wives. And what were the ladies doing during our class? What they do best: playing the role of technical advisor from the back row! It wasn't really so, but I managed to catch them chatting while the guys were whacking and stirring things.

Cajun Napalm

Some of you may know that I love to cook Cajun and Creole food. I'm not from Louisiana at all, but somehow I feel that it is in my blood. I've spent a lot of time eating and visiting in New Orleans and points south and west all over South Louisiana. I even speak a bit of the language. My first college French professor was a Cajun from Thibodaux on Bayou Lafourche, where I've been and eaten several times. But I gotta say that y'all speak some crazy French là-bas!

That reminds me of a former life in the software world about twenty years ago, when I was temporarily at Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake, TX, there was popular Cajun hole in the wall just past the Center on the curve of the lake. The servers took a shine to me and would drag me through the kitchen and force me to sample everything. By the time I got back to the dining room, I was too full to eat any more, but I had to order something and no matter what I ordered, there were always more things on my table than I ordered. I learned a lot from tasting those dishes and from the gazillions of questions that I peppered the cooks and the servers with.

Anyway, having cooked the food for just shy of 30 years now, I am so comfortable with it that I would have no problem stepping onto the line at any New Orleans restaurant and banging out the food.

What brings all this to mind is that Saturday, I had only a little bit of alligator sausage left, not enough to serve on its own, so like frugal cooks everywhere, I made it into soup, gumbo to be exact. And while I was making the roux (in a very big hurry, perhaps too much of a hurry), somehow it got me in three places on the lips and four or five on the cheeks. And I was reminded yet again why Paul Prudhomme calls it Cajun Napalm!

By all means, do make your own roux over high heat and don't be afraid of it. Just be careful, more careful than I was! Oh yeah, one other word of wisdom from the been-there-done-that school of learning, don't put your flour into wickedly hot oil as a lot of chefs do. What happens when you pour water into hot oil? It flashes to steam and explodes hot oil everywhere. If your flour contains a lot of water from the ambient humidity, things can go kaboom! Not good.

Epilogue, March 14, 2009: I posted a step-by-step roux making photo essay which you might want to see.

Veal Brisket and Grits

Here's another recipe using veal brisket, a cut that's unfamiliar to customers and chefs alike. My inspiration for this recipe is grillades and grits, amazing comfort food from New Orleans and environs. I generally make this dish with beef paleron steaks, while high dollar New Orleans restaurants tend to use more expensive cuts of veal, such as butt tenders or eye rounds. I've got to tell you that veal brisket makes outstanding grillades.

This is a recipe for chefs; you'll want to scale this down for home use and no doubt, you'll need to substitute beef brisket for veal, unless you have a really good butcher shop. Also, the cook and reheat technique is for restaurants: you can either mimic that or not as you see fit.

Veal Brisket and Grits

For 20-24 portions:
4 Le Québécois veal point end briskets (about 16 pounds)
vegetable oil
1-1/2 cups duck fat*, oil, or other fat
1-1/2 cups all purpose flour
4 poblano* chiles, diced
2 large yellow onions, diced
1 bunch green onions, sliced
6 stalks celery, diced
6 tablespoons garlic, minced
4 T Cajun spice mix*
1/2 #10 can diced tomatoes with juice
water
salt and pepper to taste

Method
1. Heat a braising pan over high flame, film with vegetable oil, and sear hard both sides of each brisket, being careful not to burn the fond.

2. Remove briskets from pan.

3. Add the oil, duck fat, or bacon grease and bring to temperature.

4. Add the flour and stir frequently to form a medium brown roux.

5. Add the vegetables to the pan to stop the roux from cooking and stir well for a couple of minutes.

6. Add the garlic and spice mix and cook for another minute.

7. Add the tomatoes and mix well, then the briskets, and enough water to come about half way up the briskets.

7. Cover and braise until tender, 4-6 hours.

8. Remove meat to a hotel pan and chill.

9. Defat the gravy and season to taste. Reserve gravy for service.

Garnish
grits*

Assembly
1. Slice a portion of veal (three slices about 3/8" thick, about 8 ounces) across the grain.

2. Reheat 4 ounces of reserved gravy and the veal in a sauté pan.

3. Finish in a hot oven, turning the veal once, until everything is hot.

Plate Up
1. Mound grits in the well of large soup plate.

2. Place veal and gravy over.

3. Garnish as desired.

Chef's Notes
*Roux in Cajun home cooking is made from whatever fat happens to be on hand. If you process as much duck at your restaurant as we do here, you have buckets of duck fat on hand at any time. Duck fat gives the roux great depth of flavor.

*Poblano chiles are not traditional in Cajun and Creole cooking; Bell peppers are. To me, Bell peppers have an assertive vegetal flavor that I don't really care for and I find that they bring out the absolute worst qualities in a wine. I'm also convinced that if the Acadians had had Poblanos, they would have used them in preference to Bell peppers.

*Cajun spice mix is ubiquitous any more: you can find it anywhere. Years ago, I used to make a unique blend for each specific dish, but now as a time saver, we make 5-pound batches of a blend that I've been tweaking for 10 years. Use whatever you feel like.

*We use Anson Mills grits, the long cook 90-minute kind. Use the best grits you can find.