Shrimp Creole

When I was a really young man, starting in my early twenties in the early 1980s, I spent a decade choosing one cuisine to learn in depth for a year. One of the first cuisines that I selected was what I will call Louisiana cooking, which encompasses both Cajun and Creole cuisines.

Shrimp Creole with Oregon Pink Shrimp

I chose to learn Louisiana cooking early on for many reasons:

• One of my mother's dishes that I loved was a mean gumbo, either filé or okra from the garden depending on the season (it was the dish she made me the first time I visited her in something like 30 years);
• Chef Paul Prudhomme was getting a lot of traction in the media at the time, though I am no fan of the blackening technique that made him famous;
• I lived within striking distance of south Louisiana in both Alabama and east Texas and visited frequently;
• As a French student in college, I was fascinated with the archaic-sounding français de la Louisiane of the bayous to the point where I would hang out in bars and restaurants in such towns as Thibodaux, Arnaudville, and Breaux Bridge just listening to the largely unintelligible patois;
• I was inspired by loquacious tales of Cajun food and culture from one of my then-young profs from Thibodaux who spoke French with a decided Southern drawl ("Parlez-vous français, y'all?");
• And finally because I found the flavor combinations so attractive to my palate, meaning I loved the food so damned much. Seriously, how much do you love Cajun andouille?!?

I haven't made shrimp creole in probably 30 years and I've really no idea what inspired me to take a pint of leftover pink shrimp (my seafood crush of the summer) and turn it into creole. I suspect that Ann and I have had a conversation of late in which I professed surprise that she had never had gumbo, étouffée, or shrimp creole. But as a New Yorker of Italian heritage, why would she?

There is much debate about whether shrimp creole contains roux, flour browned in fat, or not. I learned both ways, the more country style with roux, and the more city style without. Chefs that I respect are divided on the issue which I suspect has to do more with how you were taught (i.e., what your family made) than with any other reason. I like to use roux because I think that it gives a more complex (that is, less tomatoey) flavor. If you want to see the roux process, you might want to have a look at my post from 2008 (damn, I've been at this for a long while!).

Shrimp creole is an easy dish to make. First you make a fine dice of that Louisiana staple, trinity: onions, celery, and green peppers in roughly equal parts. For my pint of shrimp, I used a small yellow onion, half a bunch of green onions, two stalks of celery, and a single poblano pepper. Green Bell peppers have no place in my kitchen: I just don't like their flavor. While you're prepping, you'll want a big handful of minced garlic; let's call it 6-8 cloves.

The other things you'll need are a half a cup of flour and a half a cup of fat; a few tablespoons, to taste, of your favorite Cajun spice mix (I make my own and I call it Magic Dust); a pint of stock; a 28-ounce can of great quality tomatoes, blended to a purée; and a pound of great shrimp, preferably raw.

The process is simple: make a light brown roux from the fat and flour; add the diced trinity to stop it cooking; add your spice mix and a bay leaf and stir them in, followed by the stock and tomatoes. Let the mixture simmer for 20-30 minutes, stirring enough to keep the bottom from scorching and adding stock as necessary until the vegetables are done but still retain some crunch. Taste and adjust the seasoning. When you're ready to serve your creole and after your rice is cooked, drop the shrimp into the simmering sauce and cook only until the shrimp are just cooked through. Serve immediately over rice. Et voilà!

This creole I made was fine, but far from the best that I have ever made. My go-to fat for making roux is duck fat, but I only have olive oil on hand in my retirement, not like when I was rendering ducks every single day of my restaurant life. Duck fat or lard makes a way tastier roux.

And then, there are the shrimp. While these were fresh and local, they were of necessity precooked and peeled. Shrimp dishes (be they gumbo, étouffée, or creole) depend on great shrimp stock which can only be made from awesomely fresh head-on shrimp. You need the fat and flavor from the shrimp heads and the shrimp shells to make a fine stock. Sadly, I had to use chicken stock. It wasn't bad, but it was far from my times in Virginia using fresh head-on shrimp from North Carolina's Albemarle sound, trucked overnight from the docks to the restaurant.