Gumb-owned.

When we started this blog back in the summer, we never really expected it to go much of anywhere. We were bored, to be honest. I had graduated from Wittenberg University, Matty was out of school for the summer, and we hadn’t written much of anything for a while. Never did we think we'd post anything that could be considered overly useful let alone “timely”.

Oh, how we’ve grown. *sniff*

If you watched our Chicken Crab Valentine video, you know that we assigned February a theme: Soup Month. Unlike Austrian Month where we actually created a few Austrian dishes before becoming simply too lazy to post our findings, this month we fully intend to follow through on our promise. Today's dish IS a soup of sorts: Shrimp, Chicken, and Andouille Gumbo.


Our decision to feature gumbo, when combined with our previous arbitrary selection of jambalaya, might lead one to believe that we possess some semblance of clairvoyant powers. Pursuing two of New Orleans’ most iconic dishes directly prior to the Saints upset victory against the favored Colts in the Super Bowl last week does seem suspicious. Can it be that we truly have the gift of future sight?

I wish. Or maybe I don’t wish. What if the future is a terrible place and knowledge of its existence sank us so deeply into a pit of depression that we never wrote again? What if we realized that all of our time spent writing this blog never got us anywhere? No, I suspect one doesn’t require the ability to see the future to glean that bit of info.


I'd hope that if we were clairvoyant we'd have a better use for our time than messing up recipes and writing about it every now and then. To be honest, I watched the big game surrounded by a sea of blue Colts jerseys in Indianapolis a few hours ago actually. I was as surprised as anyone that New Orleans won.


ANYWAY [back to the actual cooking part of this blog], our true reason for featuring Cajun food of late is simply because it is delicious. If you need one more reason to make gumbo, "Fat Tuesday" is less a week away! Make your Mardi Gras awesome* and get you some gumbo.
*Gumbo probably won’t make your Mardi Gras awesome. More likely you’ll feel vaguely authentic, as if you were wearing a grass skirt in a Hawaiian hotel.

Now before you read this recipe and think, "Hot diggity! How am I gonna afford all of this?? 12 cups of onions? Daggum! Bump this malarkey**!", take a deep breath.

**Using proper cooking language, of course.

We know. It says it serves 16 for a reasons. If you live somewhere other than an Army base and/or on Bourbon Street,we expect you to be halving or even quartering this recipe. Yes, this requires division and multiplication, something that we are notably poor at (see Chicken Crab Valentine as a reference point). We managed well enough though, so take heart. We made half the recipe for 4 people and ended up eating it on 3-4 separate occasions, so consider yourself warned. This recipe makes a ton no matter how you look at it.

Also note that you can prepare this stuff ahead of time. We didn't read that part and Matty spent a woeful few hours chopping vegetables with our special guest stars (ok, it's our mom and sister) before I ever even made it home from work. Don't make this mistake - split the task of making gumbo up and it will be much, much less stressful for you than it was for us.


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From Epicurious.Com. If you're interested, here is the recipe as listed on that site.

Shrimp, Chicken, and Andouille Gumbo
As described in the December 2006 issue of Bon Appétit magazine

“A cook's dream: The base is made ahead, and the shrimp are added at the last minute. Best of all, the gumbo tastes even better the second day.” <-- Unlike us, I suggest you actually read this part ahead of time.

Yield: Makes 16 servings --YES, SIXTEEN.

Ingredients

1 cup vegetable oil

1 cup all purpose flour

6 large onions, chopped (about 12 cups)

6 red bell peppers, seeded, chopped (about 7 cups)

8 celery stalks, chopped (about 3 cups)

16 garlic cloves, chopped

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup chopped fresh thyme

6 bay leaves

2 28-ounce cans diced tomatoes with juice

4 8-ounce bottles clam juice

4 cups low-salt chicken broth

4 pounds andouille sausage, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices

3 pounds skinless boneless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch cubes

2 16-ounce packages sliced frozen okra

4 pounds peeled deveined medium shrimp

Minced fresh Italian parsley

Steamed rice

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Preparation

Phase I : This phase can be done up to two days ahead of the intended consumption date.

Step 1: The Vegetables: Cut the heck outta some vegetables. There's a lot of 'em, so take them out as best you can.

Step 2: The Base - Heat oil in heavy 13-quart pot over medium-high heat until very hot and almost smoking. Add flour and stir constantly until mixture is dark reddish brown, about 5 minutes. Add chopped onions, chopped bell peppers, and chopped celery and cook until onions are soft and brown, stirring frequently, about 20 minutes. Add garlic and cayenne and stir 2 minutes. Add wine, thyme, and bay leaves; bring to boil, stirring occasionally. Add tomatoes with juice, clam juice, broth, sausage, and chicken; simmer until chicken is cooked through, about 15 minutes. Add okra and simmer until tender, about 10 minutes.

If you are making the soup base ahead of time, cool slightly at this point. Chill uncovered until cold, then cover and keep chilled. Bring base to simmer before eventually continuing.

Phase II : Finishing Up

Add shrimp to pot and cook shrimp until just opaque in center, stirring often, about 5 minutes. Season gumbo to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish with minced parsley and serve with steamed rice alongside / underneath.

Enjoy.

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Tips

• This recipe is pretty straight-forward. You chop, you make the base, you toss in the shrimp at the end. IF you follow the directions and don't do everything at once, you'll have fun. Learn from our mistakes.

• Also, make sure you really have all of the supplies that you need. We had to substitute Italian sausage (NOT the same, mind you) for half of the andouille because Heinen's only had one pound when we went. Be prepared.

• We recommended this recipe to someone on Twitter who made it for 15 people and had huge success with it. He said he added a Tablespoon of extra cayenne pepper to kick it up a notch - you may want to as well.

• Do not reheat too many times once the shrimp is in! They quickly become soft to the point of becoming a pretty gross texture.

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Our Results

It was pretty good, we both decided, though we made our share of mistakes (see the Tips).We would make it again, assuming we got it right. After all, it has okra in it. Mmmm... okra. If you made this recipe as we now have it edited, we believe you'll have a hootin'-good, delicious time. I estimate it will go something like this:

We certainly hope you have a blast.

We anticipate this being the last publicly available recipe we'll be using for a while because, to be honest, things are a lot more interesting when we either find some obscure recipe in an ancient tome or straight-up invent a dish based on what we found in our cupboards. Expect a return to our roots...

Until next time.
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P.S. If you're REALLY bored, feel free to watch our step-by-step video of the undertaking! It gets... interesting.

An Exceptional Blob for an Exceptional Blog

Boy oh boy, have we had some adventures!

So Luke has been all up on my case about how we need to get this blog back on track; which I do want to do, don't get me wrong. It's just the timing that has me in something of a tizzy. I've been going a bit crazy with the end of the school semester and the SAT coming up, but, being an amazingly multifaceted and talented genius, I have been able to engage in some conquistary (I just made that word!). We looked at a few things from Luke's new French mother of all cookbooks, and some of it was very interesting indeed. We really wanted to use this crab meat that we had discovered, and we were able to find a recipe in an older cookbook for a little piece of delicious known as:

Chicken Crab Valentine

Since it is drawing closer and closer to Valentines' Day, and we really wanted to use this crab somehow, this looked ever so promising. We also have an amazing brand-new innovative spectacular mind-blowing piece of technology: folk call it the "Handheld Video Recording Device." Sounds newfangled? We thought so too! So in addition to our regular blog post, we have recorded a documentary of our adventures for your perusing pleasure. Things... did not go exactly as planned. I'll let the video speak for itself.
**Sorry for the "Trial" text at the beginning... Windows Live Movie Maker, for lack of a better word, sucks and not only lacks features, but refuses to save our video project as a movie file or to publish it to the web for that matter (hence the delay since we filmed this). For now we just have the trial version of this much better program.**




Soooooo, as you can see, there was a good deal of the human element involved here, which is putting it lightly. (Putting it heavily: Luke's dumb.) Anyways, we are leaving it up to you whether you want to follow our lead - which we don't suggest - or follow the actual recipe. It's not online anywhere, so I shall just transpose it here:

CHICKEN CRAB VALENTINE

"Serve this to your sweetie - it's special"

6 tbsp. butter
6 tbsp. flour
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. paprika
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/8 tsp. nutmeg
5-6 drops pepper sauce
2 1/2 cups sour cream
3 cups cooked chicken, cubed
2 cans crab meat (7 1/2-oz.)
8 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
2 pkgs. frozen peas, cooked (10-oz. pkgs.)

Preparation: 30 min
Cooking: 1 hour
Serves: 8-10

In double boiler, melt butter; add flour and stir until smooth. Gradually add broth and cook, stirring, until smooth and thickened. Add seasonings. Cover and cook 10-15 minutes. Add sour cream and continue hearing over simmering water. Add chicken and crabmeat. Mix lightly. Heat 10-15 minutes. Add crumbled bacon, if desired. Serve in a chafing dish or arrange on platter surrounded by peas. Best served with walnut rice, page 160.

Dorothy Hartley
-Three Rivers Cookbook II


As you saw, we took some "liberties" with these instructions (we made mistakes), but we ended up turning it into something unique. It didn't look like much... in fact it very much resembled a big ol' bowl of tuna. But it was actually ever so zesty, and the flavors melded together in a way that I hadn't expected.

Final thoughts:
-looked a bit gross
-probably because we messed it up
-tasted delicious
-although a tiny bit fishy
-very dense and filling
-made for some wonderful stories and inside jokes

Anyhow, try this one out. We'll be back. In the meantime, if any of you actually WATCHED the video, you know that next month's theme has already been chosen! Standby...

My Hands Were Thai-d.

"So you've made this before?"

"Kinda, Whitney and I made something like this."

"But you have a recipe."

"Well yeah, but mostly I used it for rough list of what to buy. I'm making a lot of it up..."

"Oh... well you know I want to put this on the blog, I mean it's pretty exotic. I've never even had Thai food. How much of that sauce did you put in?"

"Um... whatever is gone from the bottle?"

"O..k... and the soy sauce?"

"I'd say like, 8 long drips?"

"I don't think a 'drip' is a standard measurement."

"Probably not..."

"Err... Erin, look, the point of this blog is somewhat just to log our escapades, but also the idea is that a person would be able to remake a recipe themselves based on what we write... Have you measured anything?"

"No. I put about a fifth of the bottle of cayenne pepper sauce in though. That is sorta a measurement?"

"I can't cook with you anymore."

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Matty, we miss you.

The Conquistadors, or Conquistador + guests, have been at it again folks! This time the undertaking was something truly exotic - Thai food.

Now I, dear readers, have never experienced Thai food. I realized how astoundingly hard to believe this must be given the culinary expertise exhibited on this blog regularly, but alas, Thai has not previously been part of my repertoire. All I know about Thai food is that it is supposedly peanut-y and spicy.

If that is truly all it takes for a Thai dish to be wildly successful, then hold your hats and try not to fall out of your seats - this one's an award winner.

That is, if you can actually make it.

As you may have effectively gleaned from the introduction to this wonderful post, we had some... issues with the bookkeeping. My lovely guest Erin was the chef de cuisine for this meal and apparently they teach cooking a little bit different in the far-off, secluded land of Indiana.

It was her opinion that food is to be made in the moment - a rough idea of ingredients and process and an adventurous spirit is all that it takes to make a memorable dish. This is a commendable idea to be certain; the Culinary Conquistadors exist not because of our years of training in the crafting of food, but because of our desire to submit to good old-fashioned trial and error. This approach to cooking, unfortunately, has two side effects. The first is that you, the reader of this laudable blog, have very little information to go off should you wish to re-create this dish, and secondly it seems that the less you follow directions, the spicier food becomes.

This second point may merit further research.

Anyhow, as things stand I will do my best to relay to you at least what ingredients were used and will post a link to the recipe on which this creation was roughly based... I wish you the best of luck should you attempt to follow our path.

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Our Ingredients
- Creamy Peanut Butter
- Red Bell Pepper
- Green Bell Pepper
- Soy Sauce
- Spicy Thai Chili Sauce
- Garlic (cloves)
- Paprika
- Chili Powder
- "China Bowl Five Spice Powder"
- Classic Olive Oil
- Sweet & Hot Mustard
- Large can of Tyson chicken
- Small can of Tyson chicken
- Brown Sugar
- Spring Roll Skins
- Red Onion
- Cayenne Pepper Sauce
- Lots o' TLC

I won't attempt to place any measurements on any of these ingredients as, to be honest, they'd be wrong. The assembly itself wasn't too difficult. Before starting, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Next, mix everything (that isn't the spring roll skins) in a medium mixing bowl. Start with the peanut butter, add peppers, garlic (pressed), sauces, and spices, then chicken last. Be tasting the mixture as you progress, deciding on level of spiciness. Be aware, my fingers (24 hours and at least two-showers of scrubbing later) still smell like garlic.

Peanut butter seems to absorb spiciness from things such as chili powder, pepper sauce, or thai chili sauce, but baking seems to lessen the mitigating effect of the peanut butter. For this reason you may want to continually augment the mixture with more spicy additions, but be aware that the final product will probably end up slightly spicier than the pre-cooked mixture. I don't claim to understand the physics. I blame oils.

Once your mixture is "up to snuff", lay out your spring roll skins (or any sort of asian wraps ought to work). The Vietnamese wraps we used were made of rice starch primarily, and were extremely brittle... You honestly couldn't tell they weren't ultra-thin plastic circles. For this reason they will break when you try to bend them. The solution, we found, is to take the wraps and wet them beforehand... we rotated the wraps in a large salad bowl of water to give them pliability.

Take a wet wrap, place it on a plate. Take some of the filling-mixture you just created and place a line of it off-center atop the flat wrap: maybe an inch-wide line of mixture, about three inches long would be good. Take the edges of the wrap and fold it burrito-style. Here is an explanation I found on how to do this. Lay the filled rolls on a butter-coated baking sheet (will help prevent sticking). We made enough to comfortably fill one sheet with some space between the rolls (as a point of reference). Place the sheet in the oven, and begin cooking. I am unsure exactly how long we left ours in for, but check them periodically every 5 minutes or so after the first 10 minutes to check temperature and whether they seem to be baked.

Once you remove them from the oven the rolls should be ready for consumption - don't worry if they aren't pretty... they aren't really supposed to be. We chose to pour some of the extra Spicy Thai Chili sauce to garnish the rolls / for dipping; I would recommend trying this as I thought it worked out well IF you want it extra spicy. Otherwise you may want to skip it.

The final result was good, tasted much like I believe it was supposed to, just bowel-shakingly spicy given our zeal for heat. To be quite honest there is a high likelihood of your digestive system being in a bit of disarray after this one. Here is the link to the real recipe. You'll note that it is clearly not at all what we produced, but should give you an idea of some of the measurements.

Erin, unfortunately, had to head back to Indiana today, but she did succeed in leaving us a "recipe" and a lesson: "winging-it" can lead to a positive outcome!

With the return of Matty on Monday our culinary team will once more be complete. Best of luck on this recipe and try not to burn off ALL of your tastebuds... more concoctions (and hopefully more witty writing) will abound in the near future!