Southern Comfort

You can take the boy out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of the boy. I still enjoy making classic Southern dishes for myself, even after all these decades in California and many years before that in the East and Midwest. Overall my favorites are the Creole dishes typical of old-time New Orleans; they aren’t California cuisine by a long shot, and probably therein lies their charm. Not that I have anything against modern, lighter-than-light, fresher-than-fresh California stuff; I love it. But sometimes the only thing that will do is something complex, spicy, and richly flavored, and above all, just simmering with Dixie charm.

So here’s my recipe for creole chicken. Basically it’s a chicken etouffée, but over the years I’ve used some imagination and reworked it.

Fair warning: I’m not a careful-measure kind of cook, so don’t expect precise amounts of this’‘n’ that. Besides, it doesn’t matter in a dish like this, which is basically a braise-quasi-stew affair. Just use your nose, your eyes, and your taste buds.

So here’s what you will need:

A full chicken breast, boned and cut into four pieces. (Or use thighs. Or mixed pieces. Your choice.)
Chicken stock (enough for about 3 cups-ish; use good stuff or make your own. No Swanson’s.)
One package andouille sausages (I recommend Saag’s; even the Louisiana companies don’t do as well.)
A few stalks of celery
A small onion, chopped (optional)
Morton & Basset’s Cajun-style seasoning
Lawry’s Seasoned Salt
Flour
Tomato paste
Worcester sauce
Rice

Dredge the chicken pieces in a mix of flour and Lawry’s Seasoned Salt. Note that no Southern kitchen is complete without a big container of Lawry’s.

Brown the chicken pieces well in a few tablespoons of cooking oil, using a heavy skillet (cast iron is best.) Be sure to brown them on both sides — it makes a lot of difference. One they’re browned, remove them.

Slice up the andouille sausage (typically I use 3 of the 4 that are in the typical package) and brown it lightly in the skillet, using the same oil from the chicken. Then remove it.

While either (or both) the chicken and sausage are browning, slice the celery stalks and chop the onion and keep both handy.

Once you’re finished browning the sausage, add some more oil if necessary — enough to make about 3-4 tablespoons total. Then dump in a good 3-4 tablespoons of flour and mix it into a thin roux. Important: it can’t be a paste. It needs to have some liquidity to it, so adjust the amount of oil as necessary. Turn down the heat a bit (medium to medium-high) and brown the flour so as to make a red roux. What that means is that the flour browns to the point where it has a reddish tinge to it. You must keep the flour moving around so it doesn’t burn. And it must be liquid, not pasty. And don’t get impatient and turn up the heat; it will burn instead of brown. A red roux will take about 5 minutes, and you must stand there with it every split second. Watch it like a hawk, and use your nose. The enticing toasty smell of a red roux can turn to the considerably less-enticing smell of burned flour in a heartbeat.

As soon as the flour has reached the appropriate color (reddish brown, not too dark), dump in the chopped celery/onion and stir the whole like mad. That will stop the browning and give the veggies some flavor. Stir it for a minute or so; the roux will coat the veggies. Return the heat to high, and dump in about two cups of the chicken stock. Stir vigorously and let it come to a full boil; it will thicken. It will probably be kind of pasty, so thin it out with more chicken stock. The best bet is to leave it just a smidgen too thick because it will thin a bit during the simmer. Dump in about a teaspoon (maximum) of tomato paste and splash in some Worcester, probably no more than a teaspoon or so. You might need a bit of salt, depending on the chicken stock you have used. Use a good tablespoon (or more) of the Cajun seasoning.

Return the chicken and the andouille to the skillet. Make sure the sauce comes back to a boil, and that the meats are tucked down into the sauce.

Cover, lower the heat, and simmer it for about a half hour. Check to make sure the sauce hasn’t thickened too much; add stock if you need to. While that’s going on, cook the rice according to the directions. Personally I think that the only proper rice for creole dishes is regular Uncle Ben’s Converted in the orange box, but you might have different ideas. I don’t recommend using a basmati rice, though; it’s just too reminiscent of the Ganges rather than the Mississippi Delta.

And there it is; once it’s cooked enough double-check the final seasoning and adjust the thickness of the sauce to suit. It should be your basic gravy texture, overall.

Serve it over rice. Careful: it’s going to be very spicy, thanks to the andouille sausage. If it isn’t spicy enough for you, well…there’s always good ol’ cayenne pepper, or some Louisiana hot sauce. But you’re after rich complexity, and not rip-your-face-off hotness.

A few options:

1) If you add okra to the veggies, you may call this chicken gumbo since red roux and okra are the basic ingredients for gumbo.

2) Or, you can add cooked small red beans to the sauce to simmer along with the chicken & sausage. That makes the dish a gloss on classic red beans & rice.

3) Another nice way to do it is to add cooked navy or cannelli beans instead of the red ones.

4) This dish will also work very well with shrimp and/or crayfish, although in that case you don’t brown them — and you simmer the sauce with only the sausage and veggies; the shellfish goes in for just a few minutes towards the end.

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