musings of an epicurean… » on life, food, and random thoughts

So while prerusing food blogs, I kept coming across people blogging about doing the Daring Kitchen challenges. I finally mustered up my courage in April to join. Ironically I signed up hours before the Daring Chef deadline. After I got my confirmation email, I logged onto the forums to find out what the May challenge was. Gumbo. Yikes.

Sam and I both love gumbo, he probably more than me since he comes from the land of crawfish boils and real Texas BBQ. I read through the recipe, did some wikipedia-ing… cause I had no clue what “file powder” was. After a few google searches and a quick comparison, I ordered File Powder from Tony Chachere’s online. And then the wait began.

My precious spices finally showed up at the doorstep in time for the last weekend before the cut off. Since we were planning on having contractors over to work on the home, I had planned to stay at home all day on Mother’s Day to work on my Daring Cook challenge.

Our May hostess, Denise, of There’s a Newf in My Soup!, challenged The Daring Cooks to make Gumbo! She provided us with all the recipes we’d need, from creole spices, homemade stock, and Louisiana white rice, to Drew’s Chicken & Smoked Sausage Gumbo and Seafood Gumbo from My New Orleans: The Cookbook, by John Besh.

I read through the recipes religiously and then set forth to procure everything I needed. Right off the bat, the most intimidating ingredient was the 1 cup of rendered chicken fat. I asked the butcher at Whole Foods if they carried rendered chicken fat and he was nice enough to gift me 1 pound of freshly trimmed chicken butts and fatty bits for me to go home and render my chicken fat. I figured that I probably was only going to cook gumbo once in my life and this was it… so I went all out and followed the recipe to a T.

I got home around 2 and started prepping. I threw the fatty pieces of chicken in a pan and cranked up the heat… Unfortunately after 15 minutes, I probably got a single tablespoon of fat out of them. I managed to tap out “render chicken fat” on my beloved iPhone to find out that I was rendering incorrectly – chop up the fatty pieces, then add water, cover, and steam the fat out. Yikes! So I chopped up the now blistering hot chicken fat and then covered… and waited. Thankfully it worked and I managed to render chicken fat!

After I got my precious chicken fat out, I measured it and figured out the 1 to 1 ratio of fat to flour for my roux.

All while my homemade chicken stock bubbled away in the back in my matching stockpot. Absolutely love my stockpot. It boils water super fast, I don’t get it… compared to all of my other stockpots, the LC one boils the fastest. Makes me think that it has magic powers. Looking through my pictures for this challenge made me feel like I was some Le Creuset obsessed nut. Which actually isn’t too far from the truth but the amount of product placement I have in my kitchen nearly qualifies for a commercial. Sadly, Le Creuset isn’t paying me to use their stuff… or hoard it. Neither is All-Clad nor Shun.

While everything was rendering/bubbling, I had proceeded to marinate my chicken in the Cajun marinade and chopped up all of my veggies. I started to sear my chicken in batches to get a nice yummy crust on them.

I cooked the chicken in two batches and my stupid self started the roux while the second batch of chicken was still cooking so I ended up having to stir the roux with my left and grabbing the chicken with tongs with my right hand. Not cool. To add insult to injury, my husband decided to gleefully videotape his madwoman wife multitasking.

I didn’t realize how much stirring was involved in making roux but the result was amazing. I could see it carmelizing and browning before my eyes. I stirred it for about 30 minutes before adding the onions. I have to say… the onions hitting the hot fat and nutty flour created this AMAZING smell… soo amazing that it was one of the best things I’ve ever smelled while cooking!

Another 15 minutes, and my roux was done… and the seared chicken went in. 45 minutes. Just to make the base of the gumbo. I had invited our bachelor friends and I think they finished my entire pot in less than the time it took me to make the roux.

I ended up not taking pictures of the rest of the ingredients but the recipe called for sliced sausage, tomatoes, celery, bell peppers, andouille sausage, file powder, okra, and bay leaves.

The last two hours were involved the gumbo simmering so I made the Louisiana White Rice and a mango coconut bread pudding for dessert.

Considering that everyone had seconds, some had thirds, my pot was scraped clean; I’d chalk it up to challenge = SUCCESS!

Bread pudding turned out amazing. I subbed out milk and used coconut milk, plus toasted a cup of coconut to mix into the custard. It sat for an hour to soak before I baked it. I was planning on making bread pudding or croutons so I had picked up a loaf of Acme bread that I cubed up.

MMM!! Yummy!

Recipe for the bread pudding can be found HERE.

I’m already looking forward to the June challenge! 😀