I love Cajun cuisine but, in occasional moments of dietary sense, I recognise some of the dishes I love most are not exactly all the things contemporary healthy cooking is meant to be. Drawing on some of my favourite Cajun dishes, I cobbled together this more health conscious (hey, it’s not that healthy) recipe.
This intense (largely) “one-pot dish” cooks in around half an hour, which makes it really handy when you haven’t got a lot of time, but fancy something different from the usual suspects. The result is something like the lovechild of étouffée and traditional French cassoulet, with neither the classic Cajun roux of the former, nor the slow cooking of the latter.
I created it at a time when I was reducing carbohydrates, so usually, I serve it as a stand-alone dish. However, if you do like a bit of carbisfaction, you can serve it with rice, cornbread or, as I’m doing here, a good old-fashioned garlic bread, riffing on Cajun cooking’s history.
Yes, I do know that European food snobs like to point out that this classic from the crazy canon of 1970s barbeque crowd-pleasers is generally not eaten in France. However, snotty Euro foodies seldom look to the Americas and the evolution of French colonial cuisine (until some Parisian hipster sets up an overpriced joint serving poutine). Maybe they should check in on the evidence that garlic bread pretty much as we know it today, well documented in Italy by the 16th century, seems to have been adapted in the melting pot of French Louisiana as a means of not wasting bread that had already been baked and was prone to rapid mould in the humid climes if not eaten quickly.
A deceptively filling dish, this recipe comfortably feeds 3 adults without any additional accompaniments. It feeds between 4 to 6 adults if you add rice, cornbread or garlic bread as an accompaniment. Leftovers can be safely stored sealed in the fridge and reheated in a microwave (add a tablespoon of water before reheating) for at least 2 days. How much more flexible do you need a recipe to be?
Shopping list
1 large sweet potato, peeled and cubed
3 cloves of garlic, crushed of very finely chopped
2 small sweet chilli peppers, sliced
Approx. 160g of sweetcorn
3 or 4 salsiccia sausages (or alternative)
3 or 4 large/medium echalion shallots, finely chopped
2 or 3 sticks of celery, sliced
1 tin of cooked chickpeas, preferably black chickpeas (they're smaller, butcher and less likely to break down or become "powdery" than other chickpeas)
A vegetable stock cube diluted in cup of boiling water (or the equivalent in fresh stock; heated)
1 small glass of dry white wine
Zest of a lime and its juice
Olive oil
A few spring onions, finely sliced (optional)
Black pepper to taste
3 or 4 tspns Cajun spice mix. Make your own with 1 tspn each of paprika, ground cumin, ground dried chilli and dried basil and a pinch of cayenne pepper, roughly ground using a pestle and mortar. Or, get lazy and buy a good readymade such as this one from Barts (NB, theirs includes mustard that I don’t because it’s a noted allergen). The really essential, defining flavour in your mix is dried basil; never substitute with fresh basil
About those sausages...
You can use salsiccia (uncooked or dried); chorizo or, if you want to emphasise the Cajun aspect, andouille. Whatever you use, a coarse-grain sausage is what you're after if possible.
It works well with vegetarian sausages as long as they're a variety made of firmer vegetable proteins (such as Quorn), not the kind made from pulses (essentially old-school veggie burgers made into a phalluses) that disintegrate when cooked in this style of dish. Though not ideal, you can use standard British-style pork sausages if you have nothing else to hand.
This version is made with fresh, uncooked Calabrian salsiccia, which are somewhat larger than traditional British sausages and, because they are uncooked, require a different cooking time compared with smoked, dried andouille or chorizo. If using andouille or chorizo, it’s best to use a larger, single sausage and cut it into large cubes.
Before the main act...
Peel and cube the sweet potato. Bring a small pot of lightly salted water to the boil. Add the sweet potato cubes, reduce the heat, cover and simmer for no more than 7 mins. You want them to be “half cooked”, not cooked
Alternatively, cook the cubed sweet potato in a microwave steamer for about 5 mins on a medium power. But, I find cooking dense root vegetables in a microwave can make them a little "hard" on occasion
You can complete this prep the day before and store covered overnight in the fridge
Cooking Method
In a large, deep frying pan with a lid, heat a few tbspns of olive oil (or bacon lard for a traditional Cajun kick). When hot, but not smoking, add the garlic and, shortly after, the shallots and sweat both
When the onions are sweated, but not browned, add the celery and stir in. Add about 80% of the white wine, and burn off the alcohol, ensuring nothing sticks nor burns. Add the sliced sweet peppers and and stir in
If using uncooked sausage, once the sweet peppers are sealed, push the contents of the pan to the edges and add the whole sausages, turning regularly. The idea is to let the sausages seal and brown, but not fully cook them. Remove and place on a small plate, allowing them to cool. Stir any fats and juices from the sausages into the contents of the pan, adding the Cajun spices and stirring in thoroughly. Let the spices sear for a few minutes. NB: Add the spice mix according to how spicy/hot you want it; 3 for medium, 4 for moderately hot, etc.
Pour in the remainder of the wine (or a shot of bourbon if you prefer), allowing the alcohol to burn off. When it has, pour in 80% of the stock. Add the chickpeas and sweet potatoes. When the liquid begins to boil, reduce the heat, cover and allow to simmer for about 5 mins. Then remove the lid ensuring the the contents are still bubbling (increase the heat if necessary) so that the stock begins to reduce
Stir regularly, to prevent sticking and allow the mixture to reduce to a thickened, moist constituency (think, for example, of a good risotto or paella). NB: this is not a slow-cooked dish, so, if the “stew” is taking too long to reduce, add sifted, very finely ground corn flour, a tspn at a time, stirring regularly to assist reduction. Conversely, if it becomes too dry, add a little more of the stock, a little at a time
Slice the cooled sausage into thick slices. Increase the heat slightly and add the slices, making place at the centre, ensuring contact with the surface of the pan, so that they complete cooking before stirring into the mix (you do not need to do this if using dried/smoked sausage)
Add the sweetcorn and the remaining stock and stir in. Grate the zest of the lime over the top of the dish; squeeze the juice roughly over the contents and do not stir it in. Reduce the heat slightly, cover and allow it to cook on a very low heat for another 7 to 10 mins, stirring if necessary to prevent sticking
Plate, garnishing with the chopped spring onion (optional) and accompanied by preferred carbs, such as garlic bread, if desired
Variations
For a veggie version, as mentioned above, simply use veggie sausages but make sure that they are of a type that uses firmer vegetable protein (such as Quorn)
To make this dish vegan, simply ignore the sausages: it’s just as delicious without
If you don't like sausages, it also works well with bite-sized pieces of chicken (added at the point the fresh sausages are in this version, but but do not remove them from the pan after that and continue on to the subsequent steps
Pairings
I’ve never considered this quotidian dish seriously in terms of wine. I usually just have it with a glass from the bottle of white wine I used in the cooking (in this case a workable Albariño) and that generally works well even though the dish includes sausage. It’s one of those dishes that, despite including (officially) red meat always uses white wine in its cooking in French traditions. And, frankly, the only time I made the point of trying it with a red, it felt a little overpowering for the dish. Perhaps it’s the very varied vegetable ingredients or that grey area surrounding pork—is it red meat? Is it white meat?—especially when smoked.
It’s also great with a cold, light beer, a pale Spanish or Mexican cerveza with a wedge of lime, or a cider with a lime twist.
Here's Karel's first-reaction riff on the dish:
" Had it with just a slice of pide bread, very nice accord with the black cumin on the bread. I had a bottle of Fabel Barbou... the Loire sauvignon blanc that I also used for cooking. Nice match."
Comentários