Recipe: Mobile Bay Gumbo
I was born on the shores of Mobile Bay and I have spent more than 30 years living, hunting, fishing, cooking and most importantly eating beside its lapping waves. This beautiful and historic body of water provides a bounty of food especially seafood and wild game. This particular gumbo uses proteins found in or around Mobile Bay – duck, shrimp, oysters and flounder. Dig it!
| Mobile Bay Gumbo |
- 4 duck breasts
- Olive oil (if needed)
- 1/2 cup flour
- 2 onions, diced
- 1 bunch celery, diced
- 3 bell peppers, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 pound fresh okra, sliced
- 1 gallon seafood stock (give or take)
- 1 TBL oregano
- 3 Bay leaves
- 1 TBL thyme
- Salt, pepper and/or Cajun seasoning to taste
- 2 pounds flounder filets, 1″ diced
- 2 pounds peeled shrimp
- 2 pints oysters (with liquid)
- Worcestershire Sauce to taste
- Louisiana hot sauce to taste
- Lightly season the duck breasts and put skin-side down in a heated gumbo pot and cook until fat is rendered and skin is crispy as all get out, roughly 7 minutes. Remove the duck meat but leave that glorious fat.
- Add olive oil (if needed) so that you have 1/2 cup of fat in the pot and then add the flour, season to taste and cook the roux until the color of chocolate (about 15 to 20 minutes) stirring constantly.
- Add the onions, celery and peppers and cook another 5 minutes.
- Add the garlic, okra and stock. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer.
- Add the herbs and season to taste.
- Dice the duck and add to the gumbo. Cook for 20 minutes.
- Add the fish and cook for five minutes.
- Add the oysters and cook for three minutes.
- Add the shrimp and cook until pink, about 5 minutes.
- Season to taste with Worcestershire Sauce and Louisiana hot sauce.
- Serve over rice.
If you can’t find flounder then sheepshead or even catfish will do.
Review: Street’s Seafood in Bay Minette, AL
Cops are a great resource for cheap, tasty eats. Law enforcement officers (likewise with firefighters) risk the most for the least return. Ask any officer that ever attended the Southwest Alabama Police Academy in Bay Minette and they’ll tell you the best place in town is Street’s Seafood Restaurant.
I visited Street’s a few years ago while working on an article about diners. Though famous for their seafood my assignment called for me to eat the same dish at every diner I visited, hamburger steak with gravy. Recently I found myself in Bay Minette for the first time since then so I decided to try what they are famous for, seafood.
Now, I am not the biggest fan of buffets but a Third Coast restaurant rocking all-you-can-eat seafood is hard to pass up. So I didn’t.
Included in the buffet is an inviting salad bar that featured a garden of local produce but alas only iceberg lettuce. Not a deal breaker for most but for me it is. So I headed to the hot bar where waiting was a bounty of the sea and not all of it fried. Boiled crab legs, baked catfish and boiled Gulf shrimp are delicious alternatives but with few exceptions there is seldom a better way to eat seafood than cornmeal battered and deep fried.
I enjoyed a plate of fried catfish, boiled and fried shrimp, cheese grits and fried oysters; a few hush-puppies joined the party as well. I also sampled the seafood gumbo. Although I prefer my boiled seafood to be spicy, the shrimp was mild but sweet; quite good in fact. The fried catfish was perfectly done, crispy but not greasy. The same can be said of the fried shrimp. The hush-puppies were also very good; fresh not frozen and littered with bits of green onion.
The gumbo, for me, was too bland and the roux did not taste fully cooked. It also seemed to be made with chicken stock as opposed to a seafood stock. There was ample seafood in it it just didn’t boast much in the way of flavor. The oysters are a different story. They were awesome, both my dinner partners and I returned to the buffet for more oysters. I skipped the large dessert bar but it featured the usuals, peach cobbler and nanner puddin’. Both looked good but I managed to abstain.
A large sign approaching Bay Minette on Hwy. 31 proudly proclaims that if you visited and didn’t eat at Street’s your trip was wasted. Here, here! Street’s Seafood Restaurant is located at 251 U.S. Hwy.31 in Bay Minette, AL. Phone (251) 937-2664.
Diary of a Wannabe TV Chef – PT 6
This is the latest installment in a continuing series that documents my personal quest to become the host of my own cooking show. Since this is a relatively new “career,” there are no vocational programs or community college courses to prepare me for it. From what I have seen, the two most important elements in securing such a position are passion for food and plain old dumb luck. Born with a passion for food, I set out to make my own luck.
Greener Pastures
Wintzell’s Oyster House has been in operation in Mobile since 1938. What began as an oyster bar with six stools is now a multi-unit restaurant powerhouse that is unique in character and the standard bearer for what a true Gulf Coast oyster house should be. I escape from the Fern Bar to become a part of this remarkable piece of Mobile history as an associate manager.
Wintzell’s managerial formula is that there are no FOH (Front Of House) managers and no BOH (Back Of House) managers. Rather, all managers work both aspects several times a week. My stint there allows me to work at three of the four stores as well as the commissary which makes a good deal of the gumbo, jerk chicken chili, and other signature Wintzell’s dishes. I also get my first taste of catering.
My employment there also has me working notable events like the Fairhope Arts and Crafts Festival, which transforms the small artist colony of Fairhope, AL into a 200,000 visitor carnival of well-to-do art lovers from across the country. I also spend a week at the original downtown location helping during Mardi Gras. For those who do not know, Mobile, not New Orleans, is the home of American Mardi Gras, having celebrated it for nearly half a century before some engineer decided to erect a city at that peculiar crescent shaped bend in the Mississippi River.
Though the money is great and the experience is good, I have little time left to work towards the ultimate goal of becoming a TV chef. I have not written an article since going into management, over a year in fact. In the summer of 2006, I leave the time-consuming field of restaurant management to become a sous chef for a national chain Italian restaurant.
The chain has a wonderful dedication to quality ingredients and making things from scratch. All in all it is a pleasant experience with one exception, I am dirt poor. On the bright side I do have time to work on my web site and to start writing again. Towards the holidays of 2006, I see an ad that will have a profoundly effect on my quest to become a TV chef.
