Chicken and Smoked Sausage Gumbo

Our city had some uncharacteristically crummy winter weather last weekend, which was all the motivation we needed to stay in and cook up some Chicken and Sausage Gumbo. This recipe comes from one of our favorite celebrity chefs, John Besh. You may remember Chef Besh from last week's king cake, and this is one of our other favorites from his NOLA cooking bible, My New Orleans.

This is another one of those low-maintenance, leisurely meals, so if you're looking for something quick, click elsewhere! The sense of satisfaction you'll get from the first spoonful, however, is worth it. Your guests will rave about its rich, smoky flavor and plentiful carnage - and by the way, invite a crowd, because this recipe serves 10-12 hungry people.

If you're intimidated by Besh's use of a cut whole chicken in this recipe, don't be. For one thing, the gumbo cooks so long that the meat falls directly off the bone - yeah, we had visions of our guests fishing drippy drumsticks out of the stock pot, too! And if you're put off by the thought of portioning a whole chicken, just go buy a package of breasts, a package of thighs, and a package of legs.

The first step is to prepare a roux, which, for the uninitiated, is an oil and flour mixture that forms the silky basis for many rich Cajun dishes. A cup of oil and a cup of all-purpose flour are combined in a very large, heavy stock pot and are whisked continuously for 15 minutes over medium-high to high heat.

Your roux will take on a luxurious dark brown color as it's heated. If at any point in your whisking the mixture begins to smell burned, move immediately to the next step, which is to add 2 large, diced onions and dial the heat back to medium low for 10 minutes. The onions will introduce some moisture back into the roux, which, along with the reduced temperatures, will keep it from scorching.

While the onions are simmering in the roux, the chicken can be seasoned. Besh recommends his signature blend of Cajun spices, which we make periodically and store in an airtight container in our pantry. If you don't have time to blend these, or aren't sure if you like them, some Tony Chachere's or any other bottled Cajun spice mixture will work just fine.

Sprinkle the chicken with your choice of spices and incorporate it into the roux, allowing each piece of chicken to brown along the bottom of the pot.

Next, add the smoked sausage, celery, bell

peppers, tomatoes, and garlic. Allow those flavors to meld for 3 minutes before adding the thyme, chicken stock, and bay leaves. (The photo at left is pre-chicken stock.) Raise the heat and bring everything to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium low and allow the gumbo to simmer for 45 minutes.

As the gumbo cooks, bits of the chicken skin will begin to float to the surface. No one wants to eat soggy chicken skin (well, no one we know, at least!), so drag your spoon through the mixture periodically, fishing out the fat and skin.

When the 45 minutes is up, you can incorporate the andouille, okra, and Worchestershire sauce. Andouille isn't something that most stores around the country keep stocked, so any sort of smoked or pre-cooked pork sausage should suffice.

Once those ingredients are incorporated, more seasoning is added - because if there's one thing good Cajuns do, it's add flavor! (Now do you understand why we're such flavor snobs when we review dishes?)

After the seasoning is added, the gumbo must simmer for another 45 minutes. (It can go even longer than that if you need it to.) While you're waiting, it's a good time to prepare the rice over which you're going to serve your wonderful feast. Besh offers his own special recipe for Basic White Rice in his book, but any long grain white rice will work just fine.

Get a load of that gumbo, will you? We dare you to eat just one bowl, it's that good. Perfect for a rainy (or snowy) weekend day, and it should yield some great lunch leftovers, too!

Usually we don't offer the Yuppie Test Kitchen Favorites crown to dishes that take a long time to prepare, but for this masterpiece we're comfortable making an exception. The truth is, as much as we love quick and easy cooking, we love plain old cooking even more, and learning from the masters is sometimes worth a little extra effort.

We suppose you could make a quick "gumbo" somehow, or let one simmer all day in a crock pot, but you probably wouldn't be able to taste the love that comes with a good roux.

Mardi Gras King Cake

Mardi Gras season is just around the corner, and when we saw our friends begin posting Facebook statuses about king cake last week, we knew it was time to make one ourselves!

King cake is an addictive, multi-colored confection that takes a number of forms: cinnamon roll-style, donut-like, cream cheese-filled. This particular version is more of a bread dough accented with cinnamon and other spices, and it comes from a personal favorite, Chef John Besh. You can find it in his book, My New Orleans, but the Louisiana State Tourism Board has helpfully posted it for us on its website.

Those taking on this king cake should be aware that the dough requires a lot of resting time. You'd be best to save this for a lazier day or evening so that you can take your time and enjoy the process!

We begin by making the dough, which employs not one, but two sticks of melted butter. (We're kickin' it Paula Deen style, y'all!) The milk is warmed, then the sugar, yeast, and a tablespoon of flour are whisked in until the yeast is dissolved and the mixture begins to bubble. Then, the butter, eggs, vanilla, and lemon zest are mixed in, and, finally, the dry ingredients (flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg) are combined and folded in as well.

Once the dough is combined, find yourself someone who's experiencing some pent up aggression, because it's time for the dirty work. You'll need to knead the dough on a floured surface for 15 minutes, which doesn't sound like a long time until you actually start doing it. We looked at the clock after what seemed like an eternity to find that only 2 minutes had passed.

After kneading, form the dough back into a large ball, place it back into your mixing bowl, cover it, and walk away, because the dough will require one and a half hours for this first rising.

When the dough has doubled in size, dust off your old friendship bracelet skills, because it's time to braid! You'll shape the dough into three ropes of equal length and width, then braid them together into a large circular "loaf".

The dough will have some elasticity to it, so don't get frustrated when, just as you have the perfect dough-braid, it begins to shrink up on you. Just keep pulling at it and eventually you'll have a beautiful looking wreath of dough. (And if you don't, no worries - the icing will hide it well!)

It's probably for the best, after that frustrating experience, that you once again have to take a hiatus and allow the dough to rise. This time, it's only thirty minutes, so go take a bubble bath or do some tai chi to calm yourself down, because you've made it through the labor-intensive part!

When you return, your king cake will be about twice as thick as before, and ready for the oven. In case you're skeptical and wondering where you went wrong when you see your initial, paltry braid, the image at left shows our cake about to serve time in the oven. It's astonishing how much the dough fluffs up!

The cake is baked at 375 degrees for just 30 minutes, then cooled on a wire rack for another 30 minutes, which should provide you with ample time to assemble the icing.

One of the hallmarks of king cake is that it sports the carnival colors: purple, green, and gold. If you don't want to invest in pricey decorative sugars, you could always try your hand at tinting the icing with food coloring in those shades.

The icing is comprised of just three ingredients: powdered sugar, condensed milk, and a bit of lemon juice. Now, we've used this recipe twice before, and every time we have some trouble with the consistency of the icing. It just seems like the powdered sugar-to-condensed milk ratio is a little off, resulting in an icing that's just too thick to mix, let alone spread. We usually (slowly!) incorporate a few tablespoons of 1% milk as we go, which seems to help things along.

If you end up with icing that's too runny, you can always add more powdered sugar. We also recommend pouring the icing over the cake while it's still in the jelly roll pan, then, after it's firmed up some, transferring the completed cake to a serving platter.

While the icing is wet, it's time to dust it with your (beautiful!) decorative sugars. (Or tinted icing, if that's the way you roll.) You'll want to work somewhat fast for maximum icing-to-sugar adherence.

Pick a color to start - we always seem to go for green for some reason, which probably says something about us. Imagine your cake is a clock, and spread the first color sugar at the 12, 3, 6, and 9 positions; the second at the 1, 4, 7, and 10; and the third at positions 2, 5, 8, and 11.

If you want to get really authentic, make sure you tuck a plastic baby (or an uncooked fava bean) up underneath the cake and into the dough before icing it. Tradition dictates that he who finds the baby (or bean) is king (or queen!) for the day, so make sure you aim that section of the cake at someone you like! (We kid!!)

Now that's some beautiful baking, huh?! We love this recipe for a winter weekend because even though the total time is a little long, there are plenty of opportunities to sneak off and do household chores. Or just be lazy and watch TV - you've totally earned it!

Slow-Roasted Pork Carnitas

After our 8-hour debacle last week with pulled pork sandwiches, we were craving some porcine redemption. Then we stumbled upon a recipe by celebrity chef Rick Bayless.

Bayless is the proprietor of a number of Mexican- and Southwestern-inspired restaurants, including Frontera in Chicago. You may also have seen him on Iron Chef and Top Chef Masters. We went poking around on his website, which boasts an impressive collection of recipes, and found ourselves an incredibly simple recipe for Slow-Roasted Pork Carnitas. Could it really be so easy? Trusting in the pro, we turned on our oven.

We were shocked to realize that this recipe requires only 2 ingredients: pork shoulder and salt. So shocked, in fact, that we went ahead and threw on a Southwestern chili blend from Urban Accents for good measure. (It turns out this was wholly unnecessary!)

You begin by cutting the pork shoulder into 1.5- to 2-inch thick slabs. The slabs are arranged in a 9x13 baking dish - Rick says these should fit comfortably with no overlap, but we had a different experience. Fortunately, after some time in the oven, they shrunk up, giving us no cause for concern.

Then 1/3 cup of water is poured over the pork and the meat is covered tightly with aluminum foil. Rick describes this as the moist cooking phase, and it takes 1 hour of completely unsupervised cooking. (We used the time to fit in a quick P90X session.)

After an hour, the foil is removed and the dry cooking phase begins. The first 30 minutes are also unsupervised; after that time, 20 more minutes are spent turning the meat occasionally. Once the meat is removed from the oven, it's so tender that it can easily be shredded and served with tortillas as soft tacos.

Compared with our pulled pork sandwich tribulations, this recipe was a breeze to pull together - totally low-maintenance and delightfully low-cost. Plus, we can think of so many ways to serve it. (Next time, we're adding barbecue sauce to the final mixture and making sandwiches!) For its versatility and ease of preparation, Slow-Roasted Pork Carnitas have been inducted into the YTK Hall of Fame!