Holy Trinity
½ cup onion diced
¼ cup green or red peppers
¼ cup celery diced
Chop the Holy Trinity—peppers, celery, and onion—and set them aside for finishing the roux. Save all vegetable trimmings for the stock in the next step, and set aside the bright yellow celery leaves to use as a garnish. Medium-dice the vegetables, and if you’d like to add some heat, consider substituting hot peppers.
SEAFOOD STOCK
Water to cover
Fish bones
Shrimp shells
Vegetable trimmings
Put the fish bones and/or shrimp shells in a stock pot and barely cover with cold water, add vegetable trim, bay leaf. Then bring to a simmer for 30-45 mins.
Dark Roux
½ cup clarified butter or cooking oil
½ cup all-purpose flour
Meanwhile make the dark roux: put clarified butter into small pot and heat to a smoking 400 degrees or until it just begins to smoke a little. Add the flour and be ready to stir nonstop until it's done. It will go through a "peanut butter" stage and then get into dark roux or "Chocolate Roux" aka “Cajun Napalm”. To stop it from cooking and burning add the Holy Trinity Veg to sauté in the hot roux. This will stop it from over cooking and it will quickly cook the vegetables.
BLACKENING SPICE
3 g oregano
12 g cumin ground
12 g onion powder
25 g chile powder
40 g black pepper ground
50 g paprika smoked
1 g salt kosher powder
75 g brown sugar
75 g garlic granulated
The blackening spice is going to be in grams. I prefer the accuracy of grams and most people have scales that do both. It's also easier to scale up or down.
Strain the seafood stock and set aside.
Begin to ladle some stock into the roux pot while stirring on medium heat. Repeat this process one ladle at a time until the desired thickness is reached.
To finish and season the Étouffée: to taste add Worcestershire sauce, Crystal Hot sauce, and several spoons of blackening spice. Set aside until fish or shrimp is cooked.
CATCH OF THE DAY
Black Drum or Sheepshead or Shrimp
Vegetable oil
Sauté your Fish or Shrimp: season with a liberal dashing of the blackening spice, add to a medium hot pan with a little oil skin side down. Put a light weight on top of the fish to press and keep skin from curling. Once the fish has relaxed and the skin isn’t curling remove the light weight and begin to baste with oil or a few tablespoons of butter. Once the effervescence from the water in the skin has dissipated you can flip the fish for a few seconds to finish the other side.
Time to plate up: If the skin and fish look great, I suggest putting the étouffée (which means smothered) down on the plate first, otherwise smother it! Then place the fish on top of sauce and garnish with some celery leaves and some chiles if you want some zip. I also suggest adding a side of Grits or Rice to this or, if you want to be a bit healthier, use some blackening spice on some okra and have a healthy vegetable side.