With over 35 years of cooking experience, 21 years of them in the restaurant industry, and now 9 years of experience in information technology and away from the production side of the biz my focus now is to document and record in digital format the vast knowledge base that has accumulated over the years. Several boxes of manuals, binders, notebooks, recipes, etc, and with 350+ cookbooks and reference material in my library, my current focus is transforming this personal hard copy document collection into digital format.
While I still offer the occasional cooking demonstration at local specialty and gourmet shops, my cooking is primarily at home. However, in addition to my current focus of writing about food and cooking (Cajun Chef Ryan Blog), I am also working on developing a line of artisan spice mixes, sauces, and dressings for future marketing and mass production.
It is my hope to inspire others who want to pursue a career in culinary arts, restaurants, and the food service industry. I am also brainstorming about the possibility of opening up a cooking school and going back to my true love of all things culinary.
Culinarily yours,
Ryan Boudreaux
Cajun Chef Ryan
=8~)
If you enjoy the recipes and like reading Cajun Chef Ryan please consider making a contribution to support my efforts through Pay Pal. The amount you give is entirely up to you. Thanks!
Do you remember back in the 1990′s there was a little ditty by Lou Bega named “Mambo Number Five”! It was a number 1 hit in 1999 across many charts, including number 3 for the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. If you have never heard the song, you should take a quick listen, then come back for more reading here. Then the parody of the popular song (video below) is actually quite a laugh, as it pokes fun at the same tones, cadence, and styling, but with a set of lyrics that will make you want to go out and order some Chinese!
Some time later, the parody song “Combo Number Five” became an email and Internet rage, and was mistakenly attributed to Weird Al Yankovic, but this song is actually by a group called “AZN Pride”.
So what do these two songs have to do with Gumbo?
I have made so many batches of gumbo, it is impossible to count! And every batch that I make at home is just a little bit different every time, always depends on what we have on hand, sure I could just make a gumbo from a recipe and keep it consistent every time, but where is fun in always having to read a recipe every time I want to cook something? So, I figure…out of the hundreds of times I have made gumbo, there must be several variations that I have thrown together! So, here is Gumbo Number Nine!
Making a batch of gumbo reminds me of this quote as Thoreau said; "Time is but a stream that I go a fishing in".
How did I come up with nine variations of gumbo?
Probably better to ask, how do you have just nine versions of gumbo? For everyone who makes gumbo from scratch, very few of them will admit to making it exactly the same way twice. I can come close to my basic gumbo recipe, but every time I make gumbo, it is a little different.
When I know that my dad is going to sample some of my gumbo, I keep out the roux, and only thicken it with the okra and filè (pronounced fee-lay), when I make a batch of gumbo when I want to add some strong background flavor I will thicken it with a very dark roux. If shrimp are really good and in season, and I find a good batch of gumbo crabs, then it becomes a seafood gumbo. When I don’t have any good seafood, I make a chicken and sausage gumbo. When I want to impress, I make a duck and andouille gumbo. You see, just here I have already listed five different gumbos! And heck, the recipe I made yesterday is a chicken and smoked sausage gumbo, thickened with a dark roux, okra which we froze from the summer garden, and filè.
If you don’t know what filè is, then you need to check out this post on Filè Spice Powder or Gumbo filè which I originally posted on May 15th, 2008.
Gumbo Number Nine – This is the gumbo in process, having just added in the seasonings, sausage, okra, and roux. Cooking it down some before adding in the filè and chicken.
The Recipe!
This recipe will yield about 3 gallons of some tasty gumbo. Like I said, it is going to be hard for you to even duplicate this one. I most likely will never make a gumbo like this one again. I just happened to have all the stocks on hand that made this one special!
This batch of gumbo took me two days to prepare, Day 1: Cook the chicken in the stocks. Day 2: Put it all together.
Filè powder (slurry) (blended with ½-cup cool water)
To taste
Salt
Procedure Steps:
1.
Rinse the raw whole chicken pieces (2 breasts, 2 wings, 2 legs, 2 thighs, 1 neck, 1 back bone, giblets). Then add them to a large (3 gallon) stock pot. Cover the chicken pieces with the stocks and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Lower the heat to a slow simmer and continue to cook the chicken for at least 90 minutes. Periodically you will want to skim any scum that rises to the top and discard. Once the chicken is fully cooked, remove it and allow to cool on the bone, and cover, then chill overnight. Allow the stock to cool, cover, and chill overnight.
2.
In the meantime and while the chicken is simmering in the stocks you can prep the sausage, onions, bell pepper, celery, and okra if it is fresh. Or you can wait until the next day.
3.
On the next day, remove the stock from the fridge and scrape off any fat that may have risen to the top. Bring the stock to a simmer over a medium heat on the stove, add the sausage, onions, celery, bell peppers, garlic, spices, tomatoes, paste and Worcestershire sauce. Stir well after each addition, and allow this to reach a slow simmer. Make the roux, and allow it to cool to the touch. Add in the half-pound of room temperature roux, and stir well to incorporate. Allow the gumbo to simmer well for at least an hour. Then add in the filè powder slurry.
4.
In the meantime, you can pull the chicken off the bone, discarding the skin. Pull the chicken into bite size pieces. Then add the chicken to the gumbo, allow it to heat through over the low to medium heat. Season to taste with salt and Crystal hot sauce.
We like to put a large dollop of potato salad on top of our gumbo!
Enjoy!
Gumbo Number Nine – Gumbo is served with a dollop of fresh made potato salad!
Now that we are more than a week into the New Year, it would be fitting to review how we did as a blog in 2011. WordPress has a great new feature that ties in with the stats and creates this wonderful info-graphic linked here.
This is one of those recipes that has been in my dessert arsenal since the catering days at Innovative Catering Company, and was developed with the assistance of Chuck Mary, who was a culinary apprentice at the time, somewhere around 1986 or 1987. The recipe has evolved over the last twenty-five-plus years, it started out as a chocolate pecan pie, then the bourbon was added somewhere in the last twelve years or so, where it has remained since.
The recipe is easy to divide or multiply, as with the latest batch we made four!
Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie X 4
A little history on the evolution of the recipe:
We took the original pecan pie recipe and took out half of the sugar and replaced it with chocolate chips, for one chocolate pecan pie this results in 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup chocolate chips. When we added the liquor we replaced the 1 teaspoon vanilla extract with 1 tablespoon bourbon. Additionally, once the pies are removed from the oven and still bubbling hot, we drizzle more bourbon evenly over the pie, this adds an additional 2 ounces or 1/4 cup more of the liquor.
Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie
The Recipe!
This recipe gets more action during the holidays surrounding Thanksgiving and Christmas, and is a favorite on the dessert cart year round!
Ingredients for 1 pie
1
Each
Deep dish pie shell
¼
Cup
Unsalted butter, room temperature
½
Cup
Dark brown sugar
3
Large
Eggs
½
Cup
Light corn syrup or molasses
1 ½
Cups
Pecans, whole or pieces
½
Cup
Chocolate chips, semi-sweet
1
Tbsp
Bourbon (+ 2 ounces)
½
Tsp
Salt
Procedure Steps:
1.
Preheat oven to 450° F. Have pie dough at room temperature and prick with dough docker or tines of a fork. Bake in oven for 5 to 7 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove from oven and cool. Reduce oven temperature to 375° F.
2.
In the meantime, add the butter and brown sugar to the bowl of a large mixer and cream together until light and fluffy. Then beat in one egg at a time, then mix in the corn syrup or molasses, the pecan pieces, and chocolate chips, mix well. Then stir in the bourbon and salt, mix well.
3.
Place the browned pie crust and shell into a sheet pan. Pour the mixture into the prepared pie shell. Place the pie on the sheet pan and into the pre-heated oven and bake for about 40 minutes, or until the filling is set. Serve warm or allow to cool on a rack.
4.
Can be stored in refrigerator for up to a week, or frozen for several months.
Optional: Add about one-quarter cup more chocolate chips to the top of the pie mixture before baking.
The Food 52 Cookbook
140 winning recipes from exceptional home cooks
A review by
Ryan Boudreaux
This is one big book! The hardback is 425 pages plus an index, and includes recipes for summer, fall, winter and spring, a section about the contributors, and menus.
From the book, the Best Cooks Are Home Cooks. Accomplished food writers and editors Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs had a mission: to discover and celebrate the best home cooks in the country. Each week for fifty-two weeks, they ran recipe contests on their website, Food52.com, and the 140 winning recipes make up this book. They include:
Double Chocolate Espresso Cookies
Secret Ingredient Beef Stew (which is shared below)
Simple Summer Peach Cake
Wishbone Roast Chicken with Herb Butter
These recipes prove the truth that great home cooking doesn’t have to be complicated or precious to be memorable. This book captures the community spirit that has made the Food52 web site and blog a success. It features Amanda’s and Merrill’s thoughts and tips on every recipe, plus behind-the-scenes photos, reader comments, and portraits of the contributors—putting you right in the kitchen with America’s most talented cooks.
This book is one of those great collaborations that only a blog could obtain with the community and sprit of great home cooks. And what I really like about this recipe and the reason for it’s "secret" ingredient is the anchovies. They really do add a wonderful background flavor for a stew like this one. I have been using anchovies as a similar flavoring ingredient for my tomato sauces, especially with meatballs.
I will share the recipe for Secret Ingredient Beef Stew by SmallKitchCara found on pages 257 – 259 from the cookbook.
Secret Ingredient Beef Stew by SmallKitchCara
Secret Ingredient Beef Stew by SmallKitchCara
Ingredients
5 – 5 ½
Lbs.
Beef stewing meat, cut into 2-3 inch pieces
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/3
Cup
Olive oil and canola oil mixed
2
Each
Leeks, washed well, sliced thinly
1
Large
Onion, diced
8
Each
Garlic cloves, minced
2
Each
Carrots, diced
4
Ribs
Celery, diced
4
Ounces
White mushrooms, roughly chopped
½
Cup
Tomato paste
2
Each
Anchovies
1
Cup
Red wine
½
Cup
Red wine vinegar
1
Cup
Canned whole tomatoes with juice
3 – 3 ½
Cups
Beef broth
3
Each
Bay leaves
¾
Tsp
Dried Thyme
1/3
Cup
Chopped Parsley
Procedure
1.
Season the beef with salt and pepper on both sides. Heat the oil in a 5- to 6-quart Dutch oven over high heat and brown the meat in batches, adding more oil as needed. Remove the meat to a plate.
2.
Lower the heat and add the leeks, onion, garlic, carrots, celery, and mushrooms. Cook until softened, 5 to 10 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste and the anchovies and cook for 1 to 2 minutes to melt and distribute the anchovies.
3.
Add the beef and its juices back to the pot. Add the wine, vinegar, and tomatoes with juice (breaking them up against the side of the pot as you go) and raise the heat to bring to a boil. Pour in the broth to cover (you may need a bit more than 3 cups) Add 1 ½ teaspoons salt, the bay leaves, and the thyme and bring to a boil. Simmer, partially covered, until the meat is tender, 2 to 3 hours. Cool to room temperature. Refrigerate for several hours.
4.
When cool, skim off most of the fat from the top. Reheat over low heat, letting the stew simmer for 30 to 45 minutes before serving.
5.
Mix in half the parsley and garnish with the rest.
Tips and Techniques
Make this a day ahead-its flavor will improve and you can enjoy the stew without thinking of all the dishes you have to wash.
About the Cook
Cara Eisenpress is the co-author of the blog Big Girls, Small Kitchen and the book In the Small Kitchen.
