Lenguadotouffée

Next week our café in Virginia will be serving Shrimp Étouffée. This means researching the dish and choosing a recipe. This research left me hungry. Perusing Emeril Lagasse’s “Real and Rustic” cookbook, I was surprised at the simplicity of his recipe for etoufee. I had to try it, but the things that pass for shrimp in Uruguay I would sooner step on than eat. I guess shrimp don’t live in the Rio de la Plata, because the shrimp I have seen for sale here are tiny, limp, pathetic pre-cooked things. But I really wanted to make this dish. This morning we bought a large filet of lenguado from our fish vendor at the La Floresta feria. I say "our" fish vendor because we go to three ferias to buy his fish. I feel like we know him now.

Lenguado is flounder, supposedly. I believe it is, because all of the photos that resulted from my Google searches on the subject showed a flat, round fish with a squished-up face – a flounder. However, I have never seen a flounder filet so big and thick. This thing was nearly an inch thick at its thickest part and was a good 12 inches long. The cost for this beautiful and fresh piece of sea-life – 100 pesos (about $5)

Please don’t send the New Orleans food police after me, but I used this fish to make etoufee, a dish which should be made only with shrimp or crawfish. But as they say, necessity is the mother of invention. I believe that good cooks make do with what is available. Don’t force things – local and fresh is almost always better than imported or unnatural.

I cut the lenguado into chunks of about 1 ½ inches. It held up in the cooking fairly well, flaking apart just a little. Gentle handling is essential, because if stirred too much or too hard, the fish will fall apart into unappealing flakes. What you want is for the fish to remain in chunks.

To roux or not to roux? That is the question. Emeril does not use a roux in his etoufee. However, that great pillar of cajun cooking (and I’m not just talking about his girth) Paul Prudhomme, uses a roux. Based on personal experience – I have had many an etoufee in my time in Louisiana, and feel entitled by my time there to have an opinion on the subject – a roux is just overkill here. This is a delicate dish and it’s just fine without the roux. Save the roux for gumbo.

Another substitution I had to make was to substitute a finely minced fresh, orange jalapeño pepper for cayenne. I don’t know if cayenne is available in Uruguay, maybe it is, but it’s not yet in my pantry.

What you need:
1 white onion (cebolla comun), chopped
1 stalk of celery (apio), finely chopped
½ of a green bell pepper (morron verde), chopped
½ of a red bell pepper (morron rojo), chopped
2 cloves of garlic (ajo), minced
Cayenne pepper, if you can find it, or 1 orange or red jalapeño pepper (available at Tienda Inglesa or Geant)
2 tablespoons of flour, dissolved in 2 cups of water.
Salt and freshly cracked black pepper
Steamed long grain white rice (do NOT use parboiled rice or I will come and find you. Yes, that is a threat)
1 lenguado filet, cut into 1 ½ inch cubes
Butter – a lot (another threat, do NOT use margarine, or you know what will happen)

Method:

Start your rice first, so it will be ready and hot with the etoufee.

Melt the butter in a large, deep skillet. How much butter? I don’t know. Start with 8 tablespoons and add more if you feel like it.

To the hot melted butter, add the Holy Trinity (in Louisiana, this is what they call the combination of onion, celery and bell pepper). Cook this over medium heat, stirring frequently for at least 10 minutes. If you have patience, 20 minutes is better. You want the veggies to be nice and soft and slightly browned. Then add the finely minced garlic and jalapeño and cook for 2 minutes more. If using Cayenne, add the garlic, cook for a couple of minutes, then add the Cayenne. Season this mixture with salt, then gently add the fish. Cook just until the fish is white. You will have to turn the fish chunks very carefully to keep them from breaking apart – a rubber spatula works well for this. Then pour in the water/flour mixture. Very gently stir. Let this simmer gently over low to medium heat for about 7 minutes. Occasionally stir it very gently. The sauce will be thick when done. Add a bit more salt to taste and a bit of black pepper. Serve immediately over hot steamed white rice.

This recipe was adapted from the Shrimp Étouffée recipe from Emeril Lagasse’s Louisiana Real and Rustic cookbook.

Buen provecho, ya’ll.