Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Rue-Ligion

I made shrimp etoufee.


My friend Cecelia told me about this place in Alexandria called RT's.  She loves their crab cakes but the real deal there is their cajun cookin'.  I'm not gonna lie - the ambiance isn't much - but the food is super tasty.  It was at RT's that I had etouffe for the first time.  I have been missing out all these years!!  It's no surprise that I like it given how much I like jumbalaya but man, oh man, is it guuuud. 

We went to RT's a couple of weeks ago and I asked my husband if he thought it would be hard to make.  He didn't think so - it was just getting the rue right and then adding everything else.  I found this easy, online tutorial here and decided to give it a whirl.  You should try it too!  It definitely helped break me out of the Monday blues.  I put on some jazz, sipped some wine, and set a candlelit dinner with fresh flowers for me and the hubs and set to choppin' and cookin'. 


In an effort to use up an abundance of tomatoes, I used a beautiful heirloom one from our garden for this.  Mmmmmhmmmm.
My favorite part of the video instruction was when he talks about how Cajun folks equate making a rue to religion - it's that serious.  Hence, rue-ligion.  It isn't as easy as he makes it look.  Note: I have never been one for exact measurements in recipes (probably why I don't like baking) so you should probably not take my lead and do exactly as he says and does.  I might have gone a little heavy on the flour which caused me to add more butter and so on and so forth...Anyway, I finally got it to look pretty good:


Sautee them veggies in the rue:




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