A number of my cooking/baking friends and I decided to spice up 2011 by cooking a new recipe each month from a chef chosen by one of us. We pick our own recipe by that month’s chef, prepare it, and use a picture of the results as our Twitter avatar for the month. For this moth’s Twitter avatar, Margaret decided we would all make recipes by Emeril Lagasse.
I’m no stranger to Emeril. I haven’t made many of his recipes, but my go-to King Cake and bread pudding are both based in large part on his recipes. So choosing an Emeril recipe for March was fine by me. The trouble was narrowing it down to just one recipe. In the end I settled on one of my favorite foods made with ingredients I’d never used in it before.
Click here for Emeril’s duck and wild mushroom gumbo recipe. It may look complicated, but like all gumbos, it mainly just takes time. And once you’ve butchered and browned the duck and made your roux, most of the work is behind you.
Duck fat, oil, and flour cooking away to make roux. It's not done yet.
Once it hits the right level of doneness (coffee-colored), it's ready.
Quick! Add the Trinity before the roux scorches.
Lots of spices, including Essence and extra cayenne for good measure.
'Shrooms, 'shrooms, and more 'shrooms! I used six kinds of mushrooms -- morel, oyster, protabella, crimini, chanterelle, & shitake.
Mix it all together, add the browned duck and broth, and simmer for 1 1/2 hours.
Oh yeah. That's what I'm talkin' about.
Picture perfect and good enough to eat.
So, from a self-proclaimed gumbo expert — having made and tried many, many different gumbos in my time, both here and in NOLA — I have to say that this was among the best gumbo I have ever eaten. I had two big bowls for dinner and could easily have had one or two more. It was spicy, but not overly so, and the duck was rich and flavorful without the slightest bit of gaminess to it. My kids are fairly adventurous eaters, but I didn’t know how they would do with duck and the spiciness of the dish. But they both loved it.
I may have made this one with the picture in mind, but I’ll keep making it with my belly in mind. Bam!
