The night before, Lee made the shrimp stock by peeling the shells and tails off of the shrimp and putting them with the onion, garlic, and other herbs listed in the recipe. We refrigerated the stock and let the ingredients chill overnight.
The next night, my parents, my brother and his wife and their baby, Bethany, came over for dinner; and we made the etouffee as the main entrée. Instead of crawfish, we used shrimp.
To start, Lee made the white roux by sweating the onions, celery, bell peppers, tomatoes, and herbs in butter. Then she added the flour to finalize the roux. Then we added the shrimp. Both of us thought that adding the shrimp in at this stage might dry it out. But we followed the recipe to see how the it would turn out. At this point the roux was of a pasty consistency. But after adding the rest of the ingredients and the stock, the etouffee resembled a soupy gumbo. As it cooked it thickened up somewhat and we added in more stock to thin it out. It stewed while the rice was cooking.
Once the rice was ready, we attempted to plate our dishes, but we didn’t really know what would look good. After a few tries, we found that it was just easiest to put the rice on the plate and pour the etouffee over.
We did find the shrimp to be a little overdone, but the flavor of the “stew” was pretty good. In the future, we thought we’d put the shrimp in near the end to keep it from being overdone. Everyone, however, enjoyed the etouffee, and overall we found it to be a pretty simple dish to make.
