Etoufee question

I recently had etoufee for the first time and was very surprised. I was expecting a stew of trinity/mirepoix and roux with seafood.
What I received was a light sauce with essentially uncooked onions, peppers, and celery with seafood. The very crunchy vegetables were not what I was expecting, is that how it is served?

No, your etoufee was improperly-prepared. The roux is the agent for the emulsification of the trinity. Not thick, by any means; an amalgamation of those glorious components.

Yeah, no.

Octarine wrote:I recently had etoufee for the first time and was very surprised. I was expecting a stew of trinity/mirepoix and roux with seafood.
What I received was a light sauce with essentially uncooked onions, peppers, and celery with seafood. The very crunchy vegetables were not what I was expecting, is that how it is served?

Christopher Gordon wrote:No, your etoufee was improperly-prepared. The roux is the agent for the emulsification of the trinity. Not thick, by any means; an amalgamation of those glorious components.

Well, at least they didn't put carrots in there.

=R=

Octarine wrote:What I received was a light sauce with essentially uncooked onions, peppers, and celery with seafood. The very crunchy vegetables were not what I was expecting, is that how it is served?

Not traditionally, veg are typically cooked down in the roux. That said, sounds tasty and a version I'd be happy to eat. As long as there was no b*by corn involved.

Thanks for the replies. Glad I tried it before I went to New Orleans, paying big money for such a dish would have disappointed me but now I know to avoid it.

Octarine wrote:Thanks for the replies. Glad I tried it before I went to New Orleans, paying big money for such a dish would have disappointed me but now I know to avoid it.

Why would you avoid a canonical New Orleans dish such as etoufee? Its delicious, and not necessarily "big money".

According to their web site Bon Ton Cafe offers Shrimp Etouffee w/Parsley Buttered Rice for $16.95 at lunch. Crawfish etoufee is $18.99 at Gumbo House, $17.99 at Felix's and $28 shrimp etoufee at Galatoires, which is a wee bit fancier.

Swing a cat and let it fly, you will find etoufee in New Orleans

Because I very much dislike the texture of raw onions and bell peppers. Really really really dislike. I’ll pass on a dish rather than experience that.

Fun fact, I taught myself to use chopsticks at the age of 7 just so I could more easily pick out all of the crunchy onions in the bulgogi at the Korean place we went to in Rogers Park.

Octarine wrote:Because I very much dislike the texture of raw onions and bell peppers. Really really really dislike. I’ll pass on a dish rather than experience that.

I don't think the onions and peppers are traditionally raw. That also seems to be what the replies upthread were saying.

Big Jones usually has a crawfish etoufee on the menu that is really good. No raw vegetables in sight.

I've made the dish many times from Paul Prudhomme's book, and never were the Trinity the least but crunchy.

It's a pretty simple dish, if you've got your mise en place.
1) make a medium to dark roux
2) add the finely diced trinity to stop the cooking of the roux, stir constantly until the veg are cooked.
3) add the spices, then the stock
4) add the shellfish until just cooked
5) serve with rice

I will chime in again; a crawfish etoufee' is a thing of beauty. My family has been in Texas for generations, but, for reasons not worth going into here, my Opa spent time in an orphanage in Houma, LA. Despite severe hardship and abuse he came back to Texas to eventually run a company associated with Texas Instruments. He also brought with him an abiding love of Louisiana cultures and history and culinary traditions. He even studied LA culture as a much older student. Cajun and creole cuisines and regional Chinese food(in late-70's/early 80's Houston, no less) were among his passions. I grew up with once a week family dinners at whatever new find he stumbled across, so, yeah, crawfish in every Bubba Gump way you can think of, of course, later on, I found out the local Vietnamese loved mudbugs, too! An aside: at one of my previous gigs I was given a hideous apron with a jovial Paul Prudhomme emblazoned on the front. Now, give me a bowl of Milktooth(Indianapolis) Smoking Goose capicolla gumbo with grilled cornbread. That there is heaven.