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re: Etouffee - tomatoes or no tomatoes?
Posted on 8/4/17 at 1:34 pm to GetCocky11
Posted on 8/4/17 at 1:34 pm to GetCocky11
Many of the bayou cajuns I know use the term etouffee to refer to things cooked slowly, in small amounts of liquid, rather than using the term as designating a particular set of ingredients. Where I'm from, you can have an etouffee des patates (a dry-ish sort of potato stew, made with a little bit of light brown roux, usually including a handful of dried shrimp)....or a duck, shrimp, chicken, or pork etouffee. Whether or not any of that includes a few tomatoes (or a little tomato paste) depends on the cook and the season. Even folks who normally disdain tomatoes in most things will add one or two chopped fresh tomatoes to the pot if it's peak tomato season & the damn things are everywhere and need to be used.
Basically, etouffee = smothered. There is no grand codified central compendium of Cajun cooking, despite the aspirations of John Folse (who's from the River Parishes) or Donald Link (of southern/german/and a little cajun extraction, from the western prairies). As much as restaurant chefs & TV & cookbook authors want to make Cajun cooking a fixed and orthodox thing, it ain't. It is firmly in the hands of French speaking, wooden spoon yielding, beer drinking regular people who can and do switch things up, use canned cream of mushroom soup, learn & borrow from their new immigrant neighbors, and don't give a flyin' flip whether someone else "approves" of their variations & riffs.
All that ranting made me want to cook a routee, yet another related but different dish in the great bayou cajun list of dishes no one outside the region knows much about.
Basically, etouffee = smothered. There is no grand codified central compendium of Cajun cooking, despite the aspirations of John Folse (who's from the River Parishes) or Donald Link (of southern/german/and a little cajun extraction, from the western prairies). As much as restaurant chefs & TV & cookbook authors want to make Cajun cooking a fixed and orthodox thing, it ain't. It is firmly in the hands of French speaking, wooden spoon yielding, beer drinking regular people who can and do switch things up, use canned cream of mushroom soup, learn & borrow from their new immigrant neighbors, and don't give a flyin' flip whether someone else "approves" of their variations & riffs.
All that ranting made me want to cook a routee, yet another related but different dish in the great bayou cajun list of dishes no one outside the region knows much about.
Posted on 8/4/17 at 5:48 pm to hungryone
quote:
Basically, etouffee = smothered.
I've got to disagree with you bud. An etoufee is basically a thick gumbo using butter as the fat in the roux. The sweetness of the butter allows you to use proteins you wouldn't normally use in a gumbo, like crawfish.
Posted on 8/5/17 at 6:58 am to hungryone
quote:
As much as restaurant chefs & TV & cookbook authors want to make Cajun cooking a fixed and orthodox thing, it ain't.
True.
I spot checked a few recipes. Most did not use tomatoes, but a couple did.
Folse (tomato sauce), Donald Link (none), Emeril (diced tomatoes), Marcelle Bienvenu (none), Acadiana Table, (none, and notes "the tomato paste assault some years ago that had to be rebuffed by the true bayou traditionalists"), and Prudhomme (none, and uses a dark oil-based roux).
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