The Bailey's Come for Gumbo - Bringing Wine Gifts from Napa!

Well,  I had planned on serving cioppino since it was sooooo good when I made it a few weeks ago, but could not find any cooked dungeness crab at the seafood market.  Dumb me, didn't realize that we are headed out of the crab season in the Bay Area.   Quick change of plans and now seafood gumbo with shrimp and spicy andouille sausage was on the menu!

Here come the Bailey's!  I have been friends with Walt and Kathy for many many years, (not telling you how long!), I was so excited to have them for dinner at my new "pad" in Belmont.  Bummer that it was a little cloudy and rainy, my view was almost non-existent. Real bummer for them though, because they had been in the wine country all day, a little rain, a little fog, a little cold... What the heck, they're from Seattle, they can handle a little dampness!  So glad that they made a stop at St. Clement winery on the way over, bringing Tom and I gifts to serve with our feast: St. Clement Syrah, and St. Clement Abbot's Vineyard Chardonnay

Here's what we served:

Big Bowls of "Caron's" Gumbo

Cornbread baked with salsa and cheddar cheese (only real butter allowed on my table!)

Finished with caramel and chocolate brownies and French vanilla ice cream with glasses of  Ferrari Carano Villa Fiore Cabernet (yummy)

Gumbo is a lot like Cioppino, in that as long as you start with the basics, a roux and rice, the rest can be edited. So the following recipe is my edited version. Make it spicier, add different veggies, more seafood, red beans, whatever works - that's the beauty of gumbo!

Start with the Roux - the most critical piece to making a good gumbo!

1/2 cup oil - can be olive, vegetable, butter or even bacon grease

1/2 cup flour

Heat oil (I used olive) in saucepan. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, until flour mixture turns a caramelized brown color - DO NOT burn.  If it burns, you might as well start over.

Now for the rest:

1 lb. andoille sausage

1 lb. breast of chicken pieces, cut up in bite size

1 lb of shrimp/prawns

1/2 cup chopped green peppers

1/2 cup chopped red peppers

1/2 sweet large onion - chopped

2-3 cloves of garlic minced/chopped

3-4 stalks green onion, sliced and chopped

3 Tbs. butter

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can of black beans - drained

black pepper to taste

1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper, or to taste

1 tsp. chili powder

1/2 tsp. cumin (or to taste if you like it hot!)

1 tsp. dried leaf thyme

2-3 bay leaves

2 quarts chicken broth

salt to taste

In a different saucepan, heat the butter to saute' the sausage, chicken, and garlic until the chicken is slightly browned. Then add the rest of the veggies, stir and saute' for 10 minutes or so; add tomatoes (don't drain). Stir in roux and seasonings, let simmer for 20 minutes. Slowly stir in chicken broth and simmer for 1 1/2 hours - add water, or more chicken broth as needed.  Add the shrimp and the black beans last, and then either serve over rice or add the rice to the gumbo.  We added the rice, because I got in a little bit of a hurry...

I think dinner was a success!  I pulled some of the new Beachcomber dinnerware out of the warehouse, so we had some matching pieces, since the rest of our dishes are sort of  mixed-match.  Lots of very good wine was consumed, lots of laughter at our new dining room table...

Thank goodness Tom does the dishes for me,  I kind of make a big mess.  

Next time - using these fun colorful  bowls!