Shrimp gumbo for Mardi Gras – okra, shrimp, filé

It’s time to start celebrating Mardi Gras, so here is my shrimp gumbo recipe! With the New Year, it’s fun for me to reflect on how far I’ve come with Casa Bouquet and share 2017 year in review. I’m sharing some of the top posts for 2017. I am so grateful for my readers and the community of bloggers. 

Hurricane cocktail was the top post of the year. The main ingredient is passion fruit juice! This is so versatile – you can make up a pitcher of the juices to serve a crowd. It’s delicious from the pitcher or with dark rum added!

Two servings

The plastic cup chicken sound experiment is a fun craft activity for kids, looks like a joke, and is a great way to learn about sound and how musical instruments work.

Rodan + Fields eyelash booster by Brianne Monroe was the top guest post this year. Brianne has a knack for explaining how beauty products work in real life. I want to thank my other guest posters too: Amy Overbay, Michelle Benigno, Suzy Barile and Katie Park Taylor.

I’ve been so blessed this year to find a group of wonderful women to dance hula with regularly. So it makes me happy that my top post on Hawaii for 2017 was on hula culture, art, and practice.

The Dalire sisters dance together at Merrie Monarch 2013.

Holiday in Mexico was part of my Latin flavor film festival. Xavier Cugat leads his band with the help of his tiny chihuahua and Jane Powell and Roddy McDowell have a fun mid-century teen romance.

The school spirit baby bib is one of my favorites. It was so fun to coordinate fabrics to make my little grandson look like he was wearing his grandfather’s game day shirt and tie.

And here is another favorite, just in time for Mardi Gras season – shrimp gumbo, one of my favorite foods for Mardi Gras season. Gumbo is a famous type of stew or soup, made with any kind of seafood and sometimes chicken. Shrimp gumbo has a unique taste from the okra and filé. Filé is ground sassafras leaves! Shrimp and okra are plentiful in the summer too!

You will need a sharp knife, a large pot, big spoon, foil, and a baking pan for shrimp gumbo. (My pot is 8 quarts).

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cover the baking pan with foil, dull side up. Carefully spread the flour thinly over the baking pan.

Place on the middle rack of the oven to toast the flour. Stir occasionally. After 30 min. the flour should be a tan color.

Dice the bell peppers and banana peppers into half inch squares. Mince the garlic. Louisiana has its own version of mirepoix called Holy Trinity. It is a chopped mixture of onion, celery, and bell pepper. If you decide to go this route, I suggest taking it easy with the onion and perhaps only use 2 slices of onion so as to not make the taste too prevalent.

Cut the tops off the okra and discard. Slice the okra into ½ inch slices.

Heat the pan to medium (I put a generous pat of butter in the pan – when it melts I know it’s hot.) Add the olive oil and immediately add the toasted flour. Stir together to make a roux. Cook and stir until smooth and the color of an old penny. This should take about 5 minutes.

Add the peppers, okra, and garlic. Cook and stir until the peppers lose their crispness.

Add beer and chicken broth. Add bay leaf, Cajun/Creole seasoning, and Pickapeppa sauce.

Bring to a boil, lower the heat to simmer. Cover and cook for about an hour (longer if you want the okra to really fall apart).

Add shrimp and cook for 10 more minutes. Add the gumbo filé powder. Remove bay leaf.

Mound rice into a bowl and serve gumbo on top. Serves 6. Serve with French baguette and put some gumbo filé and hot sauce on the table!

Tips: 1) Roux, okra, and filé are all thickening agents. You can get away with leaving either the okra or the filé out. 2) To defrost frozen cooked shrimp: Place shrimp in a bowl of cold tap water for 20 minutes. Pour into a colander and rinse. 3) This shrimp gumbo tastes fine with the addition of other seafoods (fish fillet, oysters, crabmeat), chicken, or even sausage. 4) You can make roux the traditional way by adding flour to oil in a hot pan. You will need to cook and stir for about 20 minutes.