Cooking Directions
Make the roux by whisking the flour and oil over medium heat for 8-10 minutes (or other roux method ... we actually prefer just buying Tony's Roux mix and doing that method). Place celery, carrot, onion, green onions, green bell pepper, and garlic into a food processor and pulse until the vegetables are finely chopped. Stir them into the roux. Let simmer over medium low heat until vegetables are tender, 10-15 minutes. Add vegetable stock and water and to roux mixture.
Add sugar, salt, ground black pepper, hot sauce, ground red pepper, cajun seasoning, bay leaves, thyme, stewed tomatoes, and tomato sauce to the roux mixture. Simmer over low for 45 minutes. Then add 2 teaspoons of the file gumbo powder and simmer for another 15 minutes. In a sauce pan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and cook the cut okra with vinegar over medium heat for 15 minutes. Remove okra with a slotted spoon and put in the the simmering gumbo. Add Worcestershire sauce and simmer for 45 more minutes.
Add zucchini rounds and cook for 10-15 minutes. While the zucchini rounds are cooking, you can also start to cook the meats and then also make the croutons if you are doing that.
For the meats, we normally cook all meats separately in a skillet and then add the amount of gumbo to that skillet per the number of servings we are going to have. Since this makes a lot, gumbo is normally a 3 or 4 night meal for us, doing this is a good way to get the proper portions per bowl. If you are going to make this for a lot of people and have them over, you could put the meats into the gumbo after browning them. Normally the andouille and crab meat are already cooked, so you are just heating them up and getting a little bit of browning on them. For shrimp and/or bay scallops, you will want to make sure to cook them but not overcook them. Just before serving remove the bay leaves and add 2 teaspoons of file gumbo powder. Serve over white rice.
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