The Last Sipper

Gretchen Neuman
VinoVerver Editor

As I got ready to begin my long dry spell that we call Lent, I had one last evening to enjoy the fruit of the vine. So I was going to have a lovely evening. Or at least that was the plan.

As tradition dictates at Chez Neuman, I got out my apron and started to make gumbo. Kevin made us pina coladas, which frankly sucked. He used a mix that was WAY too sweet. So we tossed them and moved over to sangria.

Of course, as I was busy cooking I had both hands full. The trickiest part of making a gumbo is making the roux which is equal parts of fat and flour (in this case canola oil) which are cooked together until the flour particles absorb or surrounded by (check with Alton Brown, he would know for sure) and then begin to toast. When they get to the color of an old penny, it is done. But for some reason, I couldn’t get it to cook correctly. It burned which forced me to start again. I added the vegetables (peppers, celery and onion) and cooked them in the roux. Ok. This was working… and then I deglazed the pan with beer (cheap American beer bearing my maiden name… not my first choice, but it worked). And finally added the chicken stock.

Still, something wasn’t right. It looked wrong. So I couldn’t wait to taste my sangria, but I had to wait. Because at this point the gumbo still tasted of floury-beer. And so I waited. and chopped cooked chicken and frozen okra and opened a can of diced tomatoes. Evenutally after a moment of two of a good simmer, Kevin determined that everything tasted normal (this is not a skill that I can be counted on. I am hyper sensitive to tainted food and have been known to wretch at the smell of bad milk three days BEFORE it goes bad.)

Finally. I could enjoy sangria.

The problem? It just wasn’t satisfying. And now I have to wait 35 more days to have something else.

Sigh.

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This entry was posted on March 2, 2009 at March 2, 2009 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.