min.
Gumbo is a thick soup that is cooked in the southern part of the United States, in Louisiana. When cooking gumbo, onions, celery stalks, and peppers are essential ingredients of Creole cuisine. Gumbo can be cooked not only from fish, but also from meat or shrimp. It is served with boiled rice and seasoned with spicy cayenne pepper.
INGREDIENTS
- 1 kg of catfish
- 1 plate of chopped onions
- 1 plate chopped celery stalks
- 1 plate of chopped sweet peppers
- 1 plate of chopped fresh tomatoes
- a few cloves of garlic
- 1 hot pepper
- 1 onion for broth
- bay leaves, pepper peas for the broth
- cayenne pepper, salt to taste
- to serve with boiled loose rice
- oil to fry
- chopped fresh parsley and thyme
- 1 cup of cooked rice to serve
PREPARATION
After receiving the catfish, I searched for a long time on the Internet for a fish stew recipe that I could cook on the fire and taste with fresh end-of-summer vegetables. The eye fell on a previously unheard of and untasted soup-stew lump. By the way, I was very surprised when I found out that there is even a National Catfish Day in the USA, which is celebrated on June 25th, and catfish is called catfish in English, very interesting, and why is it named like that, maybe because of the similarity between the whiskers of a cat and a catfish
I gutted the catfish by separating the fillet pieces from the bone and peeling the skin off the fish. Although this process sounds like a real feat, with a properly sharp knife, everything goes quite smoothly, even without experience. I cut the catfish fillet into small pieces and set aside the fish backbone with the tail and head for the fish broth.
First, I boiled the broth. I boiled about 2 liters of water in a cast-iron pot heated on the fire, into which I added the fish backbone with the tail and head, an uncut onion head, bay leaves, peppercorns and salt. I boiled the broth on the fire for about 30-40 minutes. I poured the boiled broth through a sieve into another pot.
I fried chopped onions in oil in a cast-iron pot, when they were fried I added chopped peppers and chopped celery stalks. Then I added chopped garlic and hot pepper, and finally I added chopped (peeled before) fresh tomatoes. Stirring the vegetables from time to time, I stewed them for a few minutes and poured in a little more than 1.5 liters of the previously boiled fish stock. If you want a thicker soup, you can pour less broth and freeze the rest for another time.
I boiled the soup for about 30 minutes, then added the cut catfish fillet and boiled for another 15 minutes. I seasoned the soup with salt and cayenne pepper, chopped parsley and thyme.
I served the boiled soup with loose rice. It turned out to be a rich, spicy and autumn-scented fish dish.
Delicious fish dishes!
Recipe source: Seasonal Kitchen
