James C. Liu's Weblog

Tuesday February 24, 2009

Fast Gumbo recipe for Mardi Gras Party

Fat Tuesday Blog:

We have a party today in the building. Solaris and Clustering software folks host an annual float building contest. Hosted by the infallible Roma and Keith who simply rock when in comes to group morale and good mixed drinks! I'm in the IHV Team, which is sort of part of core Solaris team since we deal with those 3rd party hardware device drivers. Our excuse annually has been, "... we're too busy to build a float, not that we'd even be competitive."

My idea initially was to build a Network Interface Card Express Module. These are NICs that fit inside our Network Expansion Chassis atop our blade servers. We sell a 4 port x 1GbE EM based on the Intel Ophir 82571 controller. We also offer a Sun-built Neptune-Atlas chip 10GbE fibre EM with dual ports. And recently, we started offering the Intel Oplin 82598EB based 10GbE in dual port EM as well. Here's a picture of one of our express modules:

Fig. 1. Network PCI Express Module for blades.

I was thinking of building the EM and mounting it on its side on a cart. The outer chassis with two large planks of plywood would be drilled hole arrays to simulate air vents, and have the two halves hinged at the base so it would open up and show the PCI express card inside with MAC chipset and PHY and circuitry. Inside would be green PCB with gold contacts and wire leads (multiple layers of course!). And the outside would be spray painted silver. Nice idea. But I ran out of time this weekend, so again, the IHV team has no float submission.

But instead of a float, each year, colleagues expect me to bring the hot food. And last year it was spiked Jambalaya with a good dose of whiskey and white wine mixed in and simmered. It didn't last long. This year, it's Gumbo, and spicey beef stew. The stew isn't much of a secret. Just take a massive 20 lb. big slab of ribeye roast, cut out steaks from the middle choice sections with best marbling and vacuum pack for a BBQ later, (I buy the ribeye slab at Costco on sale for about $4.50/lb and cut my own steaks.). The rest of the meat, which is about half or 10 lbs of meat, I cube into big chunks, like 4 cm characteristic dimension and use for stew meat. This stuff is much more marbled and tender than tough stew meat so it's a much higher performance and faster cooking dish. And it only costs about twice the cost of tough sinewy stew scraps and tastes way better. I figure my stews are worth it. Some carrots, some celery, 1/2 a bottle of cabernet or merlot, a small can of tomato paste, salt, pepper, cayenne, a couple of bay leaves, about 5 oz. dried, sliced mushroom mix (shitake, chantrelles, portabellos, oyster, morelles, etc.), and 1 onion. I use a big 8 qt. dutch oven or massive fry pan w/ lid and do it all in one pot, from browning meat, to adding wine, seasonings, simmering, then adding veggies about half way through, and 3 hours later, you've got awesome stew.

This year's Gumbo was something I thought I'd try to do quick in the morning before heading into work. And maybe have my wife load and drop it off in the afternoon when the party starts. She's great about that, being the PTA party/hospitality mom for the kids' elementary school. But my goal was to accelerate the gumbo making process. I started my search last night for a few recipes to find something in common, which always starts with the Roux - not French for street (Rue), but the goopy flour and oil mix that's simmered until the flour/oil turns a near burnt brown. It imparts a nutty flavour to the whole Gumbo which is what makes it distinctive. Once you have Roux, the rest can go quickly.

Fig. 2. Food Network's Alton Brown's easy Gumbo

Alton Brown's recipe takes 90 minutes in the oven just to make the roux. Not fast enough. A faster recipe at EatingWell.com seemed to take just 1 hr. That's more my liking. It takes more hands-on time, but can make Gumbo that ain't shabby in just an hour. I decided on the faster receipe and looked around in the freezer for anything appropriate to throw in. Gumbo is basically a stew/soup that is poured over rice. I opted to make a shrimp, chicken, and lousiana hot link gumbo with okra and other veggies.

I've scaled down the recipe for a smaller group (like 6 - 10 people). Ingredients are as follows:

1. 1/4 cup flour
2. 1/4 cup butter
3. 1 cup diced celery
4. 1 cup diced carrots
5. 1 cup diced bell pepper
6. 1 1/2 lbs slice hot links
7. 3/4 lb peeled deveined shrimp 31-40
8. 1 lb cubed chicken breast skinless/boneless
9. 2 - 14 oz cans of chicken broth
10. 1/2 lb chopped okra
11. salt, pepper, garlic powder, cayenne, thyme, bay leaf

Basically, you start with the butter and melt in the pot and reduce to medium high heat and throw in the flour and stir for 7 - 10 minutes until dark brown. Lots of people call it "dark golden brown." There ain't nothing golden about the colour. It's like motor oil sludge and about the same consistency. Careful about burning the roux. It can happen quickly. If you're less confident manning the pot, turn down the heat and take your time. But roux can be made in just 10 minutes if you're very attentive and can adjust the heat to keep the flour cooking. Once done, add carrots and celery into the roux and it will fry them a little. Once they start to sweat, add two cans of chicken broth quickly, stir, and you will have a thick slurry. Add in bay leaf, thyme, hot links, chicken, and keep stirring every few minutes. When the pot comes back up to a boil, turn down the heat and add the okra, bell pepper and onion. Slurry should be pretty thick at this point and the okra makes it thick and slimy. But within a few minutes, the viscosity should decrease as water leaves the veggies. I simmer with lid on for about 5 more minutes, then add the shrimp, and simmer another 5 minutes, then stir in salt, pepper, garlic powder and cayenne to taste. Remember that . Some recipes require some tartness. You can add some tobasco sauce or lemon juice. I find that if I substitute 1/4 of the chicken broth with 1 cup white wine, it imparts a rich sweet/sour flavour. Cayenne is important. You need to add about 1 tspn to leave enough kick. I put the lid on and let stand and cool for about 15 minutes and it's ready to serve.

This pours over rice. I find that I can make a simple "dirty" rice by mixing brown rice with Texas long grain or Jasmine rice in 1:3 ratios. I steam it in a standard large rice cooker. 1 cup for every 3 servings of stew or gumbo.

The challenge with a big party is survivability of the veggies in the gumbo and the shrimp. Add them in too early and the water all comes out and they go mushy (the veggies) and the shrimp shrinks. Add them in too late, well, you really can't. The key is to do Just-In-Time manufacturing. That's always hard since the building doesn't have a usable kitchen, and the logistics of bringing a massive array of hot plates isn't so good for the circuit breakers when everyone else is bringing hot dishes. Having hot delivery is a great idea, and here, the real winner is my wife.

February 24, 2009 12:09 PM PST Permalink