Gumbo

photo: isn't it beautiful? I followed Rachel Ray's recipe from her show.

I love on-demand tv, no longer a slave to those show time slots! except for Entourage because that show is sweet on widescreen HDTV on Sunday at 10pm. On demand for it is much smaller.

This recipe is inspired by a Rachel Ray 30 Min. Meal episode I caught on Food Network On Demand. The recipe link is here. Although I'm usually scared of her extra bubble personality, I have to admit the woman makes cooking so much fun! She has pokes fun of her family in this episode, talking about making gumbos for hours.

I couldn't find dandelion greens so I skipped them all together. For some reason I have always had my gumbos with okra so I bought so okra to make this recipe. Rachel mixed the two parts of the recipe gumbo and rice together. I kept them separated for my own sanity. But just so you know, you can make them both at the same time. This way when your gumbo cooks, you have your rice ready as well.

Okra Gumbo
ingredients
-a pack of okra, about 20 or so individual okras. I think I used too much actually.
-an onion
-squash of some sort, it's the kind pictured below. You can use whatever greens and vegetables you like. I think bell peppers and celery along with dandelion greens were Rachel's choices.
-4 cloves of garlic
-1 bay leaf
-a few teaspoons of hot sauce (depending on your spice tolerance, funny, Rachel uses my kind in her recommendation: Frank's Hot!)
-1 bottle of pale beer
-more chicken stock or other stock to flavor the gumbo
-2 tablespoons butter
-2 tablespoons olive oil
-3 tablespoons of flour
-salt and pepper
-1 teaspoon of paprika
-1 small can of tomatoes, any kind. I used crushed tomatoes, which looked like tomato paste. hm...

preparation directions
1. cross section okra into thin round disk shapes, remove stems.
2. chop onion (chewing gum prevents tears, 100% effective!)
3. slice squash, or cut your vegetable of choice into pieces.
4. chop up garlic into pieces.

cooking directions
1. Heat a soup pot over medium to medium high heat. Add 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2. Add 2 tablespoons butter to the pot.
3. After butter melts into oil, add garlic, okra, squash and onion
4. Season with salt, pepper and paprika.
5. Cook veggies for about 5 minutes, stir often.
6. Add bay leaf and flour and cook the flour another minute.
7. Stir in the beer and reduce the liquid by half, a minute or so.
8. Add hot sauce and tomatoes.
9. Add 1 quart stock to the pot.
10.Raise heat to bring to a quick boil, then simmer 15 minutes.

Good Thyme Rice
ingredients
-rice
-thyme sprigs or dried thyme leaves
-chicken stock
-water, if you don't want so much chicken stock.
-lemon zest
-chopped scallions

cooking directions
-I used a rice cooker and just put in some chicken stock in the water that I usually use for cooking rice and sprinkled plenty of thyme leaves inside.
-Rachel Ray used a pot to make her rice.
1. add extra virgin olive oil (or evoo in Rachel's words) to bottom of pot.
2. toast 1 cup of rice in the pot for 2 minutes.
3. Add 2 cups chicken stock (or mix of water and chicken stock) and thyme leaves to the pot of rice.
4. Bring pot to a boil, then simmer for 18 minutes or until ready.
5. add zest of lemon and shopped scallions to rice, mix well.
6. Scoop out rice and place on top of gumbo.
Yummy!

Notes:
This yielded enough gumbo for 3 people or more. The rice was very savory although I only added a little stock. I really like tomato okra combo. Will definitely watch more 30 Min. Meals for more ideas!