See Also: Cooking Club · Fish and Seafood · Main Dishes
New Orleans Creole Gumbo
From Dorothy McNett's recipes at www.dorothymcnett.com. If you have some crawdads, use those also! This one contains tomatoes so it is Creole!
4 slices of bacon
1/4 cup all purpose unbleached flour
1 rib of celery, chopped
1 shallot or small onion, chopped
5- 6 green onions, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 green bell pepper, chopped
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme, or snipped fresh
1 bay leaf
1/2 pound small prawns or shrimp, skinned and deveined
1/2 pound crab claws and body, quartered
1 small red ripe tomato, chopped
2 cups fish or vegetable stock
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne, or more as desired
1 - 1/2 teaspoons file powder, if desired and available (dried sassafras leaves)
snipped fresh parsley and the crumbled bacon for garnish
In heavy bottomed saute pan or Dutch oven cook the bacon. Remove the slices of bacon and reserve for the garnish, but keep the fat in the pan. Whisk the flour into the hot bacon fat and heat gently, stirring constantly, to make a brown roux but do not let it burn. Add the chopped celery, onions, garlic, green pepper, parsley, thyme and bay leaf. Simmer about 5 minutes and then add the shrimp, crab, tomato, stock, salt, pepper and cayenne. Bring to a boil, reduce to low simmer and cook about 30 minutes to blend flavors. Remove from the heat, and then stir in the file powder but do not let it boil or it will turn "stringy". The file will slightly thicken the gumbo but is optional if you do not have any on hand. Crumble up the cooked bacon and use as a garnish along with some snipped parsley.
Recipe created 2016-03-21.
