Recipe Weekend: Gumbo Love: Recipes for Gulf Coast Cooking, Entertaining, and Savoring the Good Life by Lucy Buffett
Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received these books, free of charge,from FSB Associates, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it, all opinions are my own.
INGREDIENTS
While not out yet, this new book will be out in time for Mother''s Day,
on May 9th, so you can pre-order for gift giving now!
A delicious love letter to the Gulf Coast's vibrant food culture, by Jimmy Buffett's sister and owner of two beloved destination restaurants in Alabama and Florida.
Incorporating Caribbean, Cajun, Cuban, Mexican, Old Florida, and Creole influences, Lucy proves through her collection of recipes that the Gulf Coast has its own distinct flavors and traditions that make it a destination year after year. Surviving hurricanes, the Gulf Coast--beyond just New Orleans--has a vibrant food and culture that's gone largely unnoticed. Lucy wants to change that by sharing her food and stories with GUMBO LOVE readers.
Like her brother, Jimmy, Lucy celebrates freedom, relaxation, and seaside decadence in her own art--cooking, and has now written the cookbook her fans have been asking her for; one that offers the recipes she's famous for, along with Gulf Coast classics and stories of growing up in Mobile, Alabama, working in New Orleans, and her philosophy of relaxation, gratitude, and enjoyment.
Lucy combines over one hundred new recipes with old favorites. Her fans will find recipes for their social occasions including gumbos, main dishes, deep fried favorites (with her easy frying tutorial), salads, seasonings, libations, and desserts. They will also learn how Lucy navigates the kitchen, her business, and her family and readers will come away with the basic ingredients of an inspiring life philosophy.
Review:
In some ways, this cookbook is more personal than last year's LuLu’s Kitchen: A Taste of the Gulf Coast Good Life, as it takes us 'behind the scenes' of the last book, showing Lucy in more her natural environment, the kitchen, giving us her secrets and tips. Whereas the last book was more a celebration, this the bones behind the celebration. To me it is MORE personal, and yet it is a perfect starting cookbook, as it can take a beginner cook through recipes that will teach them basics, and inspire them to reach beyond what they think they are capable of and find their dreams! It's an inspirational book as well as cookbook, and one that might just end up being a family treasure! Give this book to Mom for Mother's Day and she'll know JUST how much you care about family and traditions! Plus the recipes are just downright YUMMY! We can't recommend it enough!
Serves 14-16
It takes courage to make a gumbo, and you’ve got to rustle up plenty more qualities along the way to achieve a successful end result. But like any character-building exercise, your experience and wisdom deepens with every step, until you reach a profound sense of satisfaction by the end of the process. A simmering pot of contentment is your reward, and the knowledge that you made this nurturing goodness from the humblest of ingredients and your own ability. It is literally and figuratively a pot full of flavor that can feed your loved ones for days and that’s just brimming with all the courage, mindfulness, and love you put into it.
It all starts with preparation—you must gather all the
ingredients and prep them: chop the vegetables, clean the seafood, and sauté the meats and sausages. When done in an orderly fashion, this preparation simplifies the steps to come. It eliminates the chaos and fear. With practice and focus, you quickly learn you were more afraid of the fear itself than the task at hand.
Next is the queen bee—the roux! Making a roux simply requires a
little focus and payin attention, seasoned with faith—you have to shake off the doubt and believe in yourself before diving headfirst into the perseverance part, which keeps you doing
what you have to do, stirring long after your arm has gone numb from pain. Then there’s the listening, where you tune in to your wisdom and experience to take the roux just to the edge of burning before you toss in the vegetables. Next is the easy follow-directions part, where you do what you’re told to do: you add the stock, along with the rest of the ingredients and seasonings, and mix it all together. Then comes the hard part for lots of us: you let it go. You leave it alone, letting it simmer, with an occasional stir. You get out of the way. You trust the age-old cooking process and let the magic happen.
INGREDIENTS
3 pounds medium
wild-caught Gulf shrimp, heads on
2 pounds cooked blue
crab claw meat, picked through for shells, handled carefully to keep
the meat in big chunks
4 large ripe
tomatoes, or 1 (28-ounce) can whole tomatoes with their juices
¾ cup vegetable oil
or bacon grease
1 cup all-purpose
flour
2 large onions,
coarsely chopped
1 bunch celery,
coarsely chopped, including leaves
2 green bell
peppers, coarsely chopped
8 cups shrimp or
seafood stock (recipe follows), heated
2 to 3 teaspoons sea
salt, or to taste
1 tablespoon freshly
ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon cayenne
pepper
2 tablespoons dried
thyme
4 bay leaves
1 teaspoon dried
basil
2 tablespoons LuLu’s
Crazy Creola Seasoning (recipe follows), or other Creole seasoning
¼ cup hot sauce
2 tablespoons
Worcestershire sauce
4 blue crab bodies,
if available (optional)
2½ pounds fresh
okra, chopped into ¼-inch pieces, or thawed frozen cut okra
2 cups finely
chopped green onions
½ cup finely
chopped fresh parsley
½ cup fresh lemon
juice
Cooked white rice,
for serving
French bread and
butter, for serving
Directions
1. Peel and devein
the shrimp. (If you’re making your own stock, reserve the heads and
shells to make the stock.) Refrigerate the shrimp and crabmeat until
ready to use.
2. If using fresh
tomatoes, fill a medium saucepan with water. Bring to a boil.
Carefully drop the tomatoes into the boiling water and cook for 1
minute. Remove with a slotted spoon and let them cool. The skins will
slip off easily. Remove the cores and coarsely chop the tomatoes over
a bowl to retain as much juice as possible. Set aside. (If using
canned tomatoes, chop each tomato into eighths and return them to the
juice in the can.)
3. To make the roux,
in a large stockpot (about 10 quarts), heat the vegetable oil over
medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, gradually add the flour,
whisking continuously, and cook, stirring and adjusting the heat as
necessary to keep it from burning, until the roux is a dark mahogany
color, 25 to 35 minutes. Be careful: if the roux burns, you will have
to start all over again!
4. Carefully add the
onion to the roux and stir with a large wooden spoon for 2 to 3
minutes. (The onion will sizzle and steam when it hits the hot roux,
so caution is advised. All seasoned gumbo cooks have roux battle
scars on one or both arms.)
5. Add the celery
and cook, stirring continuously, for 2 to 3 minutes.
6. Add the bell
pepper and cook, stirring continuously, for 2 to 3 minutes more. The
mixture should resemble a pot of black beans in color and texture.
7. Add the heated
stock and the tomatoes with their juices. Stir in the salt, black
pepper, cayenne, thyme, bay leaves, oregano, basil, Creole seasoning,
hot sauce, and Worcestershire sauce. Stir well. Bring the gumbo to a
boil and cook for 5 minutes, then reduce the heat
to maintain a slow simmer. Add the crab bodies (if using) and simmer,
uncovered, for about 1 hour.
8. Add the okra and
bring the gumbo to a boil. Cook for 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to
maintain a slow simmer and cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes, or until
the okra has lost its bright green color and cooked down like the
other vegetables. If the gumbo gets too thick, add a little water. If
it is too thin, continue to simmer it, uncovered.
9. Gumbo is always
better the day after it has been cooked, although I’ve never had a
complaint when I served it the day I made it. At this point, you can
cool the gumbo. Turn off the heat and let it sit for about 30
minutes. Then place the pot, uncovered, in an empty sink. Fill the
sink with cold water and ice around the stockpot (try not to get any
in the stockpot itself). Stir every 15 minutes to facilitate cooling.
(The gumbo will spoil if improperly cooled—see page xxx for tips on
cooling the gumbo.) When completely cool, refrigerate the gumbo in
the stockpot, uncovered.
10. When ready to
serve, slowly bring the gumbo to a simmer over medium-low
heat. Thirty minutes
before serving, add the green onion, parsley, and lemon juice to the
gumbo. Cover and cook for 15 minutes. Add the shrimp and crabmeat,
mix well, and cook for 2 minutes. Cover and turn off the heat. Let it
sit for at least 15 minutes more to cook the seafood. The gumbo will
stay hot for a long time. Remove and discard the bay leaves. Taste
and adjust the seasonings; serve over cooked white rice with French
bread and butter.
SHRIMP STOCK
MAKES ABOUT 4 QUARTS
If you are lucky
enough to get shrimp with the heads on, rejoice. Shrimp heads make
the stock even richer and more flavorful. When making stock, I fill
an empty liter Coke bottle (label removed) with water and freeze it
ahead of time. When the stock has cooled down a bit, about 30 minutes
or so, I plunge the frozen bottle into the middle to help cool the
stock from the inside out. This is also how I cool down a pot of
gumbo before refrigerating it.
INGREDIENTS
Heads, tails, and
shells from about 5 pounds peeled wild-caught Gulf shrimp
6 quarts water
2 lemons, sliced
into ¼-inch rounds
2 bay leaves
3 onions, coarsely
chopped
6 celery stalks,
coarsely chopped
1 bunch green
onions, coarsely chopped
Handful of fresh
parsley with stems, washed thoroughly
1 teaspoon whole
black peppercorns
1 whole garlic clove
White wine
Directions:
1. At least several
hours before you plan to make the stock, fill a clean, empty 1-liter
soda bottle with water to about 2 inches from the top, seal, and
freeze it.
2. Run cold water
over the shrimp shells to rinse. Place all the ingredients in a
medium stockpot. Bring to a boil over high heat.
3. Reduce the heat
to medium, or until the stock is simmering. Skim off the foam that
rises to the top. Cook for a couple of hours, skimming again about
every 15 minutes.
4. Place the
stockpot in an empty sink. Fill the sink with water and ice around
the stockpot. Let the stock cool completely, uncovered. When the
stock has cooled down a bit, about 30 minutes or so, put the frozen
soda bottle in the middle to cool the stock from the inside out.
Strain the stock, discarding the solids, transfer to storage
containers, and refrigerate or freeze immediately.
LULU’S CRAZY
CREOLA SEASONING
MAKES ½ CUP
INGREDIENTS
1 tablespoon sea
salt
2 tablespoons
granulated garlic or garlic powder
4 teaspoons
granulated onion or onion powder
¼ cup paprika
1½ teaspoons
freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons cayenne
pepper
2 teaspoons white
pepper
½ teaspoon dried
thyme
½ teaspoon dried
oregano
Combine all the
ingredients and store in an airtight container.
Recipe text: Excerpted from the book GUMBO LOVE by Lucy Buffett. Copyright © 2017 by Lucy Buffett. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Life & Style. All rights reserved. http://lucybuffett. com/
About the Author:
Lucy "LuLu" Buffett cooked her way from coast to coast before returning home to Alabama to open a modest little bayside gumbo and burger joint that doubled as a bait shop. Now, she is the successful restaurateur of two locations of LuLu's in Gulf Shores, Alabama, and Destin, Florida, where she serves over a million guests a year. Her adventures-culinary and otherwise-inspired her to write LuLu's Kitchen (formerly self-published as Crazy Sista Cooking), and now Gumbo Love.
Comments
Post a Comment