Shrimp and Sausage Gumbo

I've been a bad blogger lately.. I'm sorry... I am going to try to post two recipes tonight.. this one and the easy spicey shrimp puttenesca pasta.

My gumbo is pretty easy.. but *extremely* yummy. And it starts off like any good gumbo does...

With a roux... I took 4oz of canola oil, and 4oz (by weight) of AP flour and mixed them together over med-low heat for about 20 minutes in my cast iron dutch oven, until the roux was a nice mahogany brown.

While the roux is cooking, I dice up my veggies.. 2 green bell peppers, 2 onions, 5 ribs of celery, and 4 cloves of garlic.. Once the roux is the above color, add in all the veggies except the garlic into the pot with the roux and turn the heat up to med high.. cook the veggies, stiring often until the onion is translucent (about 10 min). Then I add in about a cup and a half of tomato puree and some canned diced tomatos and a quart of chicken stock (you could use seafood stock, or even better, make your own shrimp stock.. but I was in a hurry that day and just used chicken stock, which was just fine) With the tomatoes and the stock, I added some salt, some garlic pepper, some creole seasoning, and 4 dried bay leaves. I brought this to a boil, then covered and reduced the heat to low to let it simmer for 35 minutes. Now is a good time to start some white rice. While the rice cooked and the soup simmered, I sliced up a pound of sausage ( I used keilbasa cuz it's what I like and it's what I had).. I sliced the sausage on a bias and seared it in a small non stick skillet. After the 35 minutes is up, kill the heat and add a pound of raw peeled, deveined, tail off shrimp to the gumbo, as well as the sausage and a tablespoon of gumbo file' powder. Stir all of this very well, cover and let it sit for 10 minutes. Two things are gonna happen here.. The residual heat from simmering the gumbo for so long in a cast iron pot is going to cook the shrimp perfectly so they are tender and not rubbery. Second, the gumbo file' powder is going to thicken the soup nicely.

*a note, I personally do not like okra in my gumbo because I think it gets slimy.. I prefer to thicken it with just file' powder

Now when you're ready to serve this.. grab you a bowl.. make a little mound of rice (I used a smaller bowl to make the rice mound) and the ladle the gumbo around the rice, and pour the stock over the rice.. And it will look a little something like this:


It was yummy!! Make this soon! :)