Eccentric Flower:201002/Thoughts On a King Cake

And Other Related Topics

So, there's going to be a football game this weekend.

While I do enjoy watching the occasional football game, the problem is that it does not occupy my full attention, and there's a limited number of other things I can do while watching one. There needs to be the exact right balance between the thing occupying one half my brain and the thing occupying the other half, and this balance is hard to achieve.

Nonetheless I will be checking in on it at least occasionally, because I am hoping that the Saints will win. They're, shall we say, more than a little bit overdue. Also, anyone who beats the odious Colts is okay by me.

Of course some people do have Super Bowl parties, and on this particular occasion I have gotten more than a couple of questions/requests from people who would like to do some vaguely New Orleans-themed food. This is an excellent idea, because in Louisiana, it is impossible to separate the idea of celebration from food. (In Louisiana it is impossible to separate the idea of religion from food; of social gathering from food; of emotion from food; of history from food ... you get the idea.)

Anyway, I have been asked to say a word about king cake.

King cake, if you have not encountered this beast, is a sort of braided dough ring which traditionally does not have a filling, except possibly a lacing of cinammon and pecans, and is heavily topped with icings that have been gaudily colored in various disgusting hues. (There's nothing wrong with the traditional Mardi Gras colors of purple, green, and gold, but they're not exactly subtle and they aren't exactly what you want to see on your foodstuffs.) King cake is essentially a coffee cake and, as such, I don't much care for it. Never have. Nor do I find that the trend in recent decades to liven it up with a filling (usually cream cheese) helps at all. These days I have a hunk of king cake about once every ten years, and that's plenty for me.

But if you do want to make one, here are two recipes online which passed my critical scrutiny.

This one looks pretty authentic in all particulars. It doesn't look hard, but it does involve wrangling yeast. If you don't get along with yeast, or vice versa, or you simply don't have the time this recipe requires, it will look pretty daunting.

Most people in Louisiana don't make their own king cakes, you know. They buy them from bakeries. It's just how you do it.

There are all kinds of shortcut recipes on line. Even Emeril the Gassy has suggested one using canned crescent roll dough. That doesn't work for me, because the dough is not supposed to be a laminate like Danish pastry. Canned cinammon roll dough strikes me as being a better choice. This recipe makes mini-rings, but you could just as easily adapt it to one big ring, I should think. (Mini-rings actually might not be a bad idea, though.)

Of course, if I wanted to serve a king cake for some reason, I'd probably just call up one of the many New Orleans bakeries that does overnight shipping. We've bought from Haydel's before and it was just fine, but they insist on shipping their cakes with all kinds of cheap trinkets I don't want. I just want a cake, you know? I already have Mardi Gras beads. Gambino's is more direct, and this year they'll even sell you one iced in Saints colors. (No fools they.) Do call if you suddenly take it in your head to do this for Sunday, because you're down to the wire and probably should make sure of the shipping.

And that's all I have to say about king cake. Cut the icing down by about three-fourths, leave out the food coloring, and add some chocolate to the cinammon and pecans, and I'll eat all of it you've got. Until then, I prefer other confections.

Jambalaya is basically a wettish rice casserole. You can simmer it, you can bake it, you can do all kinds of things to it. I don't have a recipe anymore because I stopped making it. Nonelvis makes it better than I do. Besides, jambalaya is more of a "use up leftovers" recipe and it's really difficult to make a bad batch (assuming you like rice dishes). Instead of a recipe, I will give you some general tips. To get a starter recipe as a general guideline, just search yon internet.

1. This is not a pilaf/pilau/polo/perloo/paella. The grains of rice are not dry and distinct. This should have a fair bit of liquid, but not so much that you'd want to eat it with a spoon instead of a fork.

2. Brown the aromatics, add the meats/vegetables/seasonings/tomato and the necessary liquid, add the rice, cover, cook. Unlike plain rice, stir it now and then. Some people like to sort of prefry the uncooked rice first. I don't see that it does much.

3. Jambalaya is one of the few places frozen, precooked, peeled shrimp can redeem themselves.

4. Some people say that jambalaya is a brown dish, based on a roux, and that if you have tomato paste but no roux you're essentially making shrimp creole (or whatever creole). Those people are probably right, but I bother to make a roux only for gumbo. However, you cannot have a jambalaya without tomatoes. Canned paste, plus some coarsely chopped fresh if you've got them. (I don't like to use canned diced tomatoes, although as you'll see below, Nonelvis has no such qualms.)

Now gumbo.

I have cleaned up the entry from the last time I posted a gumbo recipe, although it's not so much a recipe as a procedure. Again, gumbo is like that. It really depends on how much you're making and what you've got lying around. Chicken and sausage, or turkey-leftovers-frozen-from-Thanksgiving-and-sausage, are popular at our house, but duck makes a lovely gumbo and shrimp's great if you don't add it too soon.

The recipe I posted there was for two quarts of gumbo. If you really are cooking for a big party, and you have something large like a canning kettle, you can go all out, but do remember to increase the amount of roux. I like about a half-cup roux (that doesn't mean half a cup of finished roux, but 1/2 cup oil and 1/2 cup flour as the raw ingredients) for two quarts of gumbo. More and it will taste "browner," which is good, but will also be greasier. For four quarts of gumbo I would not go less than one cup oil and one cup flour. Making a big roux is easier than making a small one as it doesn't overheat as fast, but still needs constant attention. And, I might add, do consider the problems of maneuvering a pot containing four quarts of liquid and heavy ingredients, please.

Also: do try to make your gumbo liquid at least half chicken or turkey stock. Vegetable stock is okay too. 100% water is not.

If you make a four-quart gumbo, the nice thing is that you can section a whole raw chicken - you can even preseason and brown the chunks for better flavor, but don't do that in the roux-making pot, the browned bits left behind will burn during the roux-making process and spoil the roux. Two quarts is a little small for a whole chicken.

For a four-quart gumbo it is not unreasonable to cook it for three hours, keeping an eye on the liquid level. It should just barely bubble. You don't want too much of the liquid to cook off. I've known people who started gumbo in the cold of a morning and simmered it all day.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using one of those loops of Hillshire Farms kielbasa, but it's not as strongly flavored as actual chorizo/chaurice or andouille. For four quarts of gumbo, it's not unthinkable to use two of those loops - or, around here, where we have a decent Portuguese community, one of those kielbasa loops and then a package containing three links of genuine chorizo. (I have given up paying the premium for decent andouille.)

If you happen to have frozen crawfish tails lying around, you lucky bastard, I personally think they're slightly wasted in gumbo and you should add them to something jambalaya-like instead where you can actually taste them. But if you do want to try them in gumbo, treat them like all other seafood and add them just near enough the end of cooking that their flavors commute. If you add them at the beginning of that long simmer, they won't be there when you're ready to eat. They will have literally dissolved.