Shrimp Etouffee

From Wikipedia: "Étouffée or etouffee is a Creole seafood dish typically served over rice, similar to gumbo, very popular in New Orleans and in the Cajun country of the Atchafalaya Basin to the west."

If you live in Indianapolis, I highly recommend you check out Yats, a small neighborhood restaurant located on the south east corner of 54th St and College Ave. It offers excellent Cajun dish at a really cheap price. My personal favorite is the chili cheese etouffee with crawfish. Yats also offers red beans with smoked sausage, gumbo soup, jambalaya, hunter’s stew, spinach and mushroom etouffee ...... The menu changes all the time as new dish is added to the chalk board on the wall while popular dish is erased because they run out.

I like the etouffee (prounced e-tou-ffee) dish so much that we even tried cooking it ourselves. Since we can't find crawfish in our area, we have to use shrimp instead. This is the shrimp etouffee recipe we found on emerils.com:

Ingredients:
1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) butter
4 cups chopped onions
2 cups chopped bell peppers
2 cups chopped celery
2 teaspoons chopped garlic
2 pounds medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups water
6 tablespoons chopped parsley
1/2 cup chopped green onions

Directions:
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onions, bell peppers, and celery and sauté until soft and golden, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Add the shrimp, salt, and cayenne and cook for about 4 minutes, or until the shrimp turn pink.

Dissolve the flour in the water and add to the shrimp mixture. Stir until the mixture thickens slightly. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the parsley and green onions. Stir and cook for about 2 minutes more.

Serve right away.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings

The dish tastes good but it is nothing like the etouffee dish at Yats. So if we still want the real thing, we have to drive down there. Good thing their dish is cheap, cause it seems I can't get enough of it. :)