Seafood Gumbo in New Zealand
Aug. 31st, 2020 05:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nerwengreen1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup canola oil
1 bell pepper
1 onion
2 stalks celery
10ish okra
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can water
1-2 pints chicken or fish broth
peeled and deveined shrimp, tail off
1 big fillet Hoki or red cod (local fish)
1 tablespoon Cajun Seasoning (commercial mix)
1-2 bay leaves
cayenne pepper to taste
***
To make roux, combine flour and canola oil in an oven-safe dish where it can spread out. Bake in oven at 150 C for 30-60 min. Stir occasionally.
Meanwhile, chop up all the fresh/frozen veggies.
Put roux in soup pot. Cook the chopped veggies in it, medium heat.
Add broth when the roux starts to burn at the bottom of the pot. Stir to combine.
Add tomatoes, then refill can with water to rinse out tomato juice from can into pot.
Let simmer for 20 minutes.
If the shrimp is raw, add it early. If the shrimp is cooked, add it when adding the fish.
Meanwhile, cook the fish in some more canola oil. Hoki falls apart when pan-fried. It should be a bunch of small chunks and shreds when done.
Add fish to soup pot along with seasonings.
Let cool overnight and eat the next day, served with Carolina long grain rice.
And on that note... my introduction to what will hopefully be a series of posts. In most online recipes (especially American ones), you're stuck scrolling through a whole song and dance about someone's childhood before you get to the actual recipe. So in my case, I'll put the recipe on top and then tell my life story in relation to the recipe at the end.
So, gumbo is from the American Deep South. It's not possible to make a 100% authentic version of it in New Zealand, because New Zealand doesn't know how to do sausages. The basic barbecue sausage here is more like a very fat, very bland hot dog - has the texture of highly processed hot dog meat, twice as wide as an actual hot dog, and none of the taste (or really any other taste). There are local markets around where you can buy other kinds of sausages, but in general they seem to prefer bland and textureless. All of the spicy sausages are called "chorizo" but I've yet to run across any that resembles actual chorizo from American Hispanic marketplaces.
Anyhow, so there's no Andouille sausage here that I'm aware of, or anything even resembling it, and in my opinion the gumbo is more authentic to just leave the sausage out.
On the other hand, the costs for bell peppers is reversed. Green peppers tend to be more expensive for some reason, while red, orange, and yellow cost less. Since the red, orange, and yellow ones taste better in my opinion, I tend to go for those. Not sure if it matters from an authenticity standpoint even though it's usually green pepper in the U.S.
I'm not sure whether or how often okra is available in the supermarkets here, but I found a big bag of frozen at the Asian grocery. There's enough for 4-5 pots of gumbo.
And finally, hoki is a great fish for putting into soups and stews and works great in gumbo. It completely falls apart if you touch it while it cooks, so the fish bits get spread out and make the soup thicker. (Edit to add: red cod also does this. Great for when hoki isn't available.)
The roux idea is from Alton Brown, who introduced it with his seafood gumbo recipe (which involves making shrimp broth but also includes sausage). Instead of standing over a stove for 30-60 minutes constantly whisking, just stick it in the oven. It works great with vegetable oil. I've also tried it with butter, but the butter solids can burn and affect the taste and lumpiness of the roux. It does stain and get baked on to whatever dish it's being baked in. I use a toaster oven to save having to heat up the big main oven.
There are lots of recipes around for what herbs and spices to use. A lot of them mention file powder, which is made from a tree leaf that isn't available in New Zealand, but the okra slime and fish bits make up for the lack of thickening, I think.
Also, I'm inclined to not end up with dozens of different tiny jars of herbs and spices again, so I'm being lazy and using a mix. It's just called Cajun seasoning and the brand is common, and tastes great.
1/4 cup canola oil
1 bell pepper
1 onion
2 stalks celery
10ish okra
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can water
1-2 pints chicken or fish broth
peeled and deveined shrimp, tail off
1 big fillet Hoki or red cod (local fish)
1 tablespoon Cajun Seasoning (commercial mix)
1-2 bay leaves
cayenne pepper to taste
***
To make roux, combine flour and canola oil in an oven-safe dish where it can spread out. Bake in oven at 150 C for 30-60 min. Stir occasionally.
Meanwhile, chop up all the fresh/frozen veggies.
Put roux in soup pot. Cook the chopped veggies in it, medium heat.
Add broth when the roux starts to burn at the bottom of the pot. Stir to combine.
Add tomatoes, then refill can with water to rinse out tomato juice from can into pot.
Let simmer for 20 minutes.
If the shrimp is raw, add it early. If the shrimp is cooked, add it when adding the fish.
Meanwhile, cook the fish in some more canola oil. Hoki falls apart when pan-fried. It should be a bunch of small chunks and shreds when done.
Add fish to soup pot along with seasonings.
Let cool overnight and eat the next day, served with Carolina long grain rice.
And on that note... my introduction to what will hopefully be a series of posts. In most online recipes (especially American ones), you're stuck scrolling through a whole song and dance about someone's childhood before you get to the actual recipe. So in my case, I'll put the recipe on top and then tell my life story in relation to the recipe at the end.
So, gumbo is from the American Deep South. It's not possible to make a 100% authentic version of it in New Zealand, because New Zealand doesn't know how to do sausages. The basic barbecue sausage here is more like a very fat, very bland hot dog - has the texture of highly processed hot dog meat, twice as wide as an actual hot dog, and none of the taste (or really any other taste). There are local markets around where you can buy other kinds of sausages, but in general they seem to prefer bland and textureless. All of the spicy sausages are called "chorizo" but I've yet to run across any that resembles actual chorizo from American Hispanic marketplaces.
Anyhow, so there's no Andouille sausage here that I'm aware of, or anything even resembling it, and in my opinion the gumbo is more authentic to just leave the sausage out.
On the other hand, the costs for bell peppers is reversed. Green peppers tend to be more expensive for some reason, while red, orange, and yellow cost less. Since the red, orange, and yellow ones taste better in my opinion, I tend to go for those. Not sure if it matters from an authenticity standpoint even though it's usually green pepper in the U.S.
I'm not sure whether or how often okra is available in the supermarkets here, but I found a big bag of frozen at the Asian grocery. There's enough for 4-5 pots of gumbo.
And finally, hoki is a great fish for putting into soups and stews and works great in gumbo. It completely falls apart if you touch it while it cooks, so the fish bits get spread out and make the soup thicker. (Edit to add: red cod also does this. Great for when hoki isn't available.)
The roux idea is from Alton Brown, who introduced it with his seafood gumbo recipe (which involves making shrimp broth but also includes sausage). Instead of standing over a stove for 30-60 minutes constantly whisking, just stick it in the oven. It works great with vegetable oil. I've also tried it with butter, but the butter solids can burn and affect the taste and lumpiness of the roux. It does stain and get baked on to whatever dish it's being baked in. I use a toaster oven to save having to heat up the big main oven.
There are lots of recipes around for what herbs and spices to use. A lot of them mention file powder, which is made from a tree leaf that isn't available in New Zealand, but the okra slime and fish bits make up for the lack of thickening, I think.
Also, I'm inclined to not end up with dozens of different tiny jars of herbs and spices again, so I'm being lazy and using a mix. It's just called Cajun seasoning and the brand is common, and tastes great.
