One thing you can try, that will definitely change the flavor, but it may be worth a try: add a little sugar to “fool” your tongue. Also, take the shrimp out and rinse them with water. This will do two things: you will loose some of the heat and you don’t want to overcook them when you reheat. Throw them back in just before serving.
I don’t know if anyone else has suggested it yet, but regarding the addition of the diary, feel free to add some unsalted butter. This will tone down the heat and change the flavor in a very positive way.
On a related note; if something is too salty for you, throw in a peeled and large-chunked (so you can retrieve the pieces from the finished product - unless you WANT to leave it in; which may work.)
If etouffee is breaded. you should seriously toss that cookbook in the trash.
When I lived in Lafayette, before Cajun food became popular and was thus still real, I also don’t remember any jalapenos in it, or any milk based dishes. Sour cream or milk mixed with etouffee is not going to be terribly appetizing. I grew jalapenos when I was down there, very successfully, but not for Cajun food.
The dud runs restaurants in NoLa … he follows the fads. It is currently faddish to pepper the bleeding fuck out of foods that are supposed to be mildly hot.
Start with the holy trinity, bell pepper, celery and onion in fine dice called a mirepoix. Tweaking hot tends to be done with hot sauce much of the time, various levels of the hots of paprica [sweet, half sharp and sharp], tiny amounts of ground cayenne and judicious use of something like a cubanelle to adjust the pepper spectrum of flavors. If there are chunks of something, it will be a bell pepper.
And to fix it, make an entire batch of sauce without any pepper of any sort at all, and mix the 2 together, serve over white [though I really love brown] rice and have beer and milk to drink as both serve to cut the heat. Freeze in single or 2 serving amounts or have a party and get rid of it all at once.
Honestly? If something I try comes out inedible it gets tossed or goes to the dog and chickens. Life is too short to eat inedible foods. I will eat dressed rice or noodles for a few days if I am short of money rather than try to eat something that inedible.
Bell pepper, celery, and onion is called trinity or holy trinity. The term mirepoix is usually, as pointed out, reserved for the French-cuisine combination with carrots.
This would work if it wasn’t for the fact that milk is inutterably vile and awful tasting, and would probably make me retch if I tried to swallow a chug of it plain. Bleagh. I am getting queasy just imagining it.
Yes I realize that my aversion to the foulness that is the flavor of milk is not universal, but that’s just because the rest of you haven’t realized it yet.
Shoot - now I goota go score some sausage and duck whip me up a gumbo.
Yeah I know it’s not “authentic” but sausage and duck confit gumbo is one of the best damn things you’ll ever put in your mouth.
I’m with you there. Money isn’t an issue, and although I don’t like wasting food, I don’t want to suffer through food that’s too hot to eat or slop that’s been adulterated to extremes in an effort to make it edible. We’re probably going to scrap the leftovers and go out for a couple nights this week.
We had already tried one other recipe from that book that turned out really good, so we’re not giving up on this book; we’ll try other recipes and be more judicious with the pepper application.
You keep eating it until it is no longer too hot. It’s called “educating your palate.”
Of course, like all addictions, there comes a time when that will no longer be hot enough, and you will make your etouffee by substituting an habenero for the jalopeno (keep the poblano for flavor.). Then a second and a third. There comes a point where your farts combust spontaneously, singeing your pants, but you won’t care because it still isn’t hot enough.
Or you could wimp out by following the advice of cheeseheads like Qadgop, for whom black pepper needs to tone it down a notch.
No, one jalapeno and one poblano is usually pretty mild. That said, peppers vary wildly. I make a cream of poblano corn-chowder type thingy that usually is okay for pretty much most people with low heat tolerances. Every once in awhile though, the soup ends up too spicy for these people, with the poblanos being as hot as a standard jalapeno (and much, much bigger.)
Not sure what you mean. I eat raw habaneros and Scotch bonnets on their own off my pepper plants in the backyard during the late summer. I hate how people associate eating hot peppers with machismo, but the truth is I have built up my tolerance to the point that it really takes serious, serious heat to register. My point was that jalapenos and poblanos vary in heat, so that people who only can handle mild peppers may occasionally get a batch that is too hot for them. I’m not saying they’re spicy for my palate.
