By But I like cocktails and lurking
I have mentioned before that there are five Mother Sauces in French cooking. One of those is Tomato Sauce, or Neopolitan Sauce. There are many, many variations on this one as anyone familiar with spaghetti sauce, lasagna, ketsup, or salsa knows. Today I want to talk about a tasty French/Indian/Spanish fusion we in Louisiana call Sauce Picquante (sauce peekahn). It has a unique flavor that, unless you know a couple of simple tricks, can be hard to obtain. It is going to be the base for a stew called (whatever meat you use) sauce piquante, in this case chicken and sausage sauce piquante. If you read my gumbo recipe, you will find this is very similar and equally easy.
A sauce Piquante is essentially a fancy roux. Instead of starting with flour and oil, we use a little oil and tomatoes. The tomatoes can be in the form of tomato paste, sauce, canned tomatoes, or fresh peeled and chopped tomatoes. Put 12 oz to 16 oz in a skillet over medium high heat. Mash them and stir them around until they boil, just like the basic roux, until they start to cook down. As the water evaporates and the tomatoes thicken they will also start to brown but you want this to happen slowly. Again, if it smokes or blackens, you have the stove too hot. As it thickens, it will become tomato paste and brown. When it gets to be the color of milk chocolate, add in an equal amount (4-6 oz) of ordinary dark roux and mix well. There you have it. A sauce piquante is a flour/tomato and oil roux – what some would call a tomato gravy.
My sister-in-law makes an excellent sauce piquante by mixing the flour into the tomato, then adding oil, and browning both simultaneously.
If all of this sounds like too much work for a base, then I will let you in on a little secret. Tomato paste is made by cooking tomatoes down, putting them into a can, and then steaming the cans to pasteurize them for preservation. This process often browns the tomatoes for you. You may have noticed that some canned tomato paste is brownish in color. That isn’t oxidation from a leaky can, it is cooked tomato. We want it like that.
If the paste is not already browned or browned enough straight out of the can, you can add a little oil and brown it very quickly in a skillet. Or not. It is nearly there anyway.
Sauce Piquante in Five Minutes
1 Six ounce can of tomato paste
¼ cup of dark roux (bought ready-made)
One 12 -16 oz bag of frozen seasoning mix (onion, bell pepper, celery)
One cube of beef boullion
1 tablespoon of minced garlic or 1 teaspoon of powdered garlic
1 teaspoon of Zataran’s liquid crab boil
1 teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper
Dark chicken (8 boneless, skinless thighs or 4 leg quarters)
About 2 lbs of Andouille sausage ( ¼ inch slices)
Place all ingredients in a large stock pot. Just toss them all in willy-nilly. No need to mix or stir. That will happen when it boils. Add water until the level covers the meat, cover with a lid, and bring to low boil for one hour. Stir occasionally. Put away your ingredients and wash whatever dishes you have.
Serve over rice.
– Get yourself a microwave rice cooker. It is a simple plastic pot with a snap-on lid and a vent. It only costs a couple of bucks. To make your rice, put two cups of water, one cup of rice (basmati best), two chicken bouillon cubes, one and a half tablespoons of butter, and about one tablespoon of dried, sweet basil in the pot. Microwave on high for 15 minutes.
You can taste the rice but don’t let anyone else taste it before serving the meal. They will eat all of your rice right out of the cooker.
You can put this together and get it boiling in just five minutes with little effort. It has a very unique flavor and is hearty and satisfying. Outside of Louisiana, I have never had anything like it. It is the perfect dish for cold days or just plain ol’ hungry people. Be careful that no one overeats to the point of not being able to get up from their chair.
Comments
135 responses to “Ah!! Delicious, Delicious Cultural Appropriation”
Its a roux.
You’ll rue the day you said that
Who talks like that?
I guess it goes from God, to Jerry, to you…..to the cleaners. Right, Kent?
A roué.
the word ‘roux’ is the point where I nope away from making a dish. I don’t care if it’s the same process I use to make gravy.
I actually didn’t even know what roux was until glibertarians.com recipes started going up. Do I have to make this shit myself or can I buy a bag of roux from the grocery store?
Don’t know, I tend not to use it.
It’s cheap and easy enough to do yourself. But also time and attention-consuming enough to buy a packet.
Depends on where you are. After discussion on the original mention of the roux, I’ve checked out the grocery stores in the North East Ohio region, and no roux to be found. The lighter the roux, the easier to make, the darker the roux, the more time consuming and touchy. I’m partial to using bacon fat in mine.
It seems like the only places you can find premade roux are places where you don’t need to buy it at the store. I’ve never seen it in my life up in Maryland. Hell, I’ve just started seeing pre-cut mirepoix at the local grocery store.
Hmm, I’m right around the Washington D.C. area in Virginia. If you’re in the DMV than you know our stores are pretty similar to what you have up in Maryland. Sounds like I won’t be able to find it, but I’ll have to ask around at each of my local grocers.
It’s insanely simple. I can’t imagine buying it. Fat and flour. Appx equal amounts. Butter is usually the fat used for a gravy made with chicken or beef stick. Bacon grease is commonly used for a white southern gravy.
Stock not stick
How long does it take though? Will it require me to constantly be checking on it?
Rice?
Sounds delicious. I recently became a thigh man – I’m off breasts.
I stopped cooking with chicken – too fowl.
Breast meat definitely has the better texture, but thighs have more fat and more flavor. Also, it’s cheaper by the pound.
I like to buy a 10 pound sack of leg quarters. I will smoke them all at once and eat have lunch to take to work for a week.
Really? I might just suck at doing up breast, but I definitely prefer the consistency of thigh.
You might overcook it. I don’t like it dry. It’s harder to overcook dark meat.
Thighs are the best. My wife is a breast-only girl, which works out for us. I like the more “chicken-y” flavor that thighs have.
Your wife is a breast girl?
Does she let you watch?
Aww, I just noticed this…when I last checked the Poppy piece early this morning there were exactly 420 comments. I figured its stopping there was deliberate, but then y’all had to go and ruin it a few hours later!
There’s no coordination here.
I’m Poppy.
I suppose, on one level, we’re all Poppy.
You know who else deliberately tried to stop comments?
Your average YouTube Social Justice Warrior?
The Daily Beast?
The Huffington Post?
What do you think about the Alton Brown “roux in the oven” technique?
Did he deliver it with less than his normal overbearing smugness?
I generally like him. Even being an uga grad.
It’s hit and miss. There are times when he goes all condescending “I’m right and there’s no other possible flavor choice than this disgusting mess I’ve made and anyone who disagrees with me is just a dumb philistine”. I don’t appreciate that attitude in anybody.
The episode of Good Eats where he covers roux has him putting it in the oven because he could never manage to make it on a stove top. Since that party of the episode is all about him being unable to master a fairly simple cooking task and admitting that he couldn’t, you’ll probably find him less smug than his normal self.
I mean, how do you fuck up roux? Take fat, add flour, low heat, stir until it looks right. Also, calling yourself a chef and not knowing how to make a roux is like calling yourself a software developer and not knowing what an array is.
How do you know what “looks right”?
He had no problem making most roux, it was making a brick roux without burning it that he had problems with. Should a professional chef be able to make a brick roux? Sure, and he did, albeit in a non traditional way. In fairness though, there is a very thin line between brick roux and burnt mess.
Alton Brown is not, and never was, an actual chef. He attended culinary school and produced food shows.
Yeah, that was my understanding too. I like his shows.
*Raises Hand* I can’t make a successful roux in a regular basis. I mean sure 4 out out 10 times I try it will come out right, the other 6 are split pretty evenly between too weak, burnt, and a lumpy mess
Also, AB has never once called himself a chef and has gone out of his way to correct people when they have called him one
OT: Gotta love Vidal.
I don’t see what that has to do with shilling shampoo.
He’s does that overly primped, tatted, and blinged thing that I can’t stand – but that is pretty amusing.
Speaking of Cultural Appropriation… living in a small house is now “poverty appropriation”.
The Troubling Trendiness Of Poverty Appropriation
I thought lefties wanted people to live in small boxes “fuh the Eart!”
Sure, but they want to make everyone poor first. Then it is okay for them to live in small boxes.
… and it troubles me for one simple reason. Choice.
Yep.
Well yes, but you should still feel guilty about it!
Oh bloody Hell. The Onion’s business model is in serious trouble. And for the record cultural appropriation is what people have been doing since there were more than two tribes on the Serengeti. Maybe you can make an argument against cultural denigration stemming from some type of racism. But that is not what is being argued against here. /rant
Relax, lay back, accept that you are guilty and submit. It will all be over soon.
Oh I know I”m guilty. I’m a middle aged white man. Can’t get any more guilty than that? See all you suckers in the camps.
You won’t get to the camps. You’re going straight to the wall.
Doc, I can assure you that we middle aged white men will be running the camps. If I see you there, it will probably be so we can cut a deal on some newly-minted orphans.
And yet, I can’t help but feel
Well, there’s yer problem right there.
RESPONSES
The author has chosen not to show responses on this story. You can still respond by clicking the response bubble.
*shocked face*
Did you respond?
I clicked the bubble, but nothing happened. Apparently I’m not allowed into their bubble.
Sorry, I appropriated your comment. You were first, so I will rightly withdraw my comment and shocked face.
Damnit, I was already 500 words into my essay calling for a conversation about commenting appropriation.
I want to live like a poor man, but with lots of money. –Pablo Picasso
I have to admire him – he did convince the world that what he put to canvas still qualified as “art”. Though he was less brazen than Pollack as you could still pretend there was an image worth looking at in Pablo’s work.
I suppose it’s heartening that, for the most part, these cultural kvetches confine themselves to moral preening and half-hearted social shaming, rather than calling for prohibitions. For the most part. This one at least makes no mention about getting men with badges and guns to oust the “hipsters” and other delinquents from their tiny houses. No, it’s just another tired call for “conversation,” which actually means hectoring, but in either case deserves the same response: Fuck off and get off my tiny lawn.
I do like the euphemistic “participating in capitalism,” as in, working for a living. Being productive and prosperous. Earning the choices this twit bemoans having none of.
“Participating in Capitalism”… there’s something I’m forgetting to do… Oh! I have to get another book to market.
What a shock!
They electrified the response bubble?
Wait, you mean like certain urban music stars that ‘sing’ about growing up in poverty and having to deal drugs and break laws, then continue to do these things after making millions of dollars? Is that poverty appropriation too?
No, that’s poor risk analysis.
About the Antarctica waterfalls I linked to yesterday.
I knew I saw that shit before, this isn’t new science: Proof.
~~~Cry for Mother Antarctica, for Mother Antarctica cries.~~~~
From the article:
“If these ice shelves weaken and break off, they can release a flood of ice into the ocean, raising sea levels in the process.”
FAIL.
Look Chicken Little, I mean Chelsea, when you are scaremongering about a subject you dont know Jack Shit about it helps to consult with someone who does.
OT
I might be infringing on derpy’s territory here, but I ran across this today. I couldn’t get through it all, but my god the derp.
http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/fiscally-conservative-socially-liberal/
Even if the people supporting these policies don’t intend this, the policies are racist, sexist, classist (obviously), ableist, homophobic, transphobic, and otherwise socially retrograde.
Obviously.
There should be a term for that ism pileup, because it’s super common and always appended to a given sentence as a clause of its own. I get that their political MO is logrolling for one another’s pet cause, so you have to particularize each element of the grievance mafia, but it’s such a tired cliche and terrible writing that anymore my eyes lose focus as soon as the predictable litany appears. Okay, woke Lorax, we get it, you speak for the minorities.
Well if they said “disagrees with us” it wouldn’t sound as damning.
They hold those truths to be self evident. Their Declaration of
Independance.Nice.
I think you already got it. Ism pileup has a nice ring to it.
Maybe ism blast or ismorrhea.
I like ismorrhea. Calls out to diarrhea and logorrhea, which are both apt.
That’s some mighty fine derp there, Lou.
I don’t know whether to be happy or sad that my work blocks EF.
Relieved.
Jesus Christ that bitch made her own personal strawman army inside that article.
Nope nope nope. I still haven’t recovered from the “Rich is immoral article.” No more derp.
I wonder if they setup a macro to handle those acronyms.
The author got one thing right, then I stopped reading, because I was pressing my luck:
You can’t separate fiscal issues from social issues. They’re deeply intertwined.
Absolutely. This is why I say I am fiscally libertarian and socially libertarian.
Someone may think that means the same thing as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, but it doesnt.
Or just libertarian, because you can’t separate the two.
Molyneuxenhammer.
We are approaching the singularity…
Oh. For some reason I was thinking Peter.
^ same
How easy is it to scratch and chip an enamel coating on a pan?
Depends how hard she hits you in the mouth with it.
Depends on what you’re doing with it… do I WANT to know what you’re doing with it?
I have a lot of steel cooking implements. I’ve avoided spending money on non-stick pans because I don’t want to end up ruining them.
Enamel won’t get scratched by steel, it’s harder. In the Mohs scale sense. You could end up chipping it, but you’d have to bang out fairly hard. Any use that is within normal cooking parameters and you’ll be fine, just don’t drop them/ drop something heavy into them.
I was thinking teflon. Yes, I agree: enamel is much harder to ruin.
Not exactly true. The problem is that when you introduce a scratch to the surface, even if it is a small scratch, the repeated heat cycling and water ingestion will open that scratch up relatively fast. Imagine the small cracks that happen in roads and how quickly they turn into potholes. It kinda works like that.
So, you’re saying I should tax my neighbors to fix it, right?
Only if you can’t just steal their shit and cry racism when they attempt to stop you.
You’ll ruin the coating much quicker with steel.
If you love your pans don’t use metal on them. Simple as that. You can find good quality plastic or polymer tools just about anywhere now. Start using them.
I have yet to find a plastic utensil I’d rate as “high quality”
I like wood or bamboo.
I’m not fond of porous materials – especially when trying to clean them
There’s something about deglazing a pan with a wooden spatula. Plastic bends and metal scrapes, but wood is just right.
Wood is sustainable! It’s part of Gaiaiaaahhhhhh! (shoots self)
This
Bed Bath & Beyond has plenty of “high-quality” plastic utensils (I was just in there today, in fact) but for the price of one spatula you can get a whole set of bamboo utensils.
It’s inevitable unless you replace all your kitchen tools with ones designed not to scratch. The first time you use a metal fork to stir something you will scratch it.
I have a big cast iron skillet I use almost exclusively.
Is there some magic trick to maintaining the seasoning on a cast iron? I got my first one for Christmas, and despite not using soap or a scrubby sponge on it, it looks like shit after every use. I’m constantly having to coat it with oil and leave it in the oven on low heat for a couple of hours between uses.
Science, not magic. You have to get a good seasoning on it. For gentle scrubbing, I’m partial to kosher salt.
If you don’t have any orphans versed in making chainmail (it’s not exactly a high demand skill these days after all), then you can take a look at this product. I have one and it gets used regularly on my various different cast iron pans.
Cost more than a few bucks, but get yourself a real rice cooker.
I have a Zojirushi which cost about $300, but it makes delicious rice. And if you pour soy sauce on it, the next thing you’ll be swallowing is my revolver.
^ check out rich guy here.
he’s been known to drop 170¥ on a single hot dog and cola!
Hey. I got one of the cheaper ones. Best money you’ll spend if you like delicious, fluffy rice.
“A real rice cooker”
This the name of the Asian call girl I frequent.
Zojirushi makes incredible consumer products. My daughter’s thermos is insane, and it was not that expensive.
Agreed. We used our Hitachi rice cooker for about 5 years, almost daily, before it conked out. The Zojirushi just feels much more solidly built.
If you paid $300 for your elephant steamer you paid too much. I got one on Amazon for $230
Damn. How does that fit in your kitchen?
He steams the elephants in the yard.
Under the cabinets. Like this but a much messier kitchen:
http://rice-cooker-steamers.top5reviews.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2015/05/Zojirushi-NS-LAC05XT-rice-cooker-3.jpg
Is that yours? Gangs of NY Daniel Day Lewis set o’ knives you got there.
Not mine unfortunately.
There Will Be Rice
LOL. Ok, I just reread your comment. Sorry.
I dunno… I get perfectly good results in a saucepan – especially with this stuff. Mmmmmm
*faints*
Computer lab, or pizza joint… project due tonight, or beers and a slice.
Why not bring the pizza and beer into the computer lab?
I *should* bring the lab to the pizza place, but I reluctant to buy a laptop that I’ll only ever use at the bar.
Get drunk, then do the project. Works every time,