First You Make A Roux

First you make a roux. Many of my favorite recipes begin with this sentence. Roux (pronounced “roo” is from the French word “red”) is one of the simplest, and yet most delicately difficult dishes to prepare properly. There’s not much to it, just flour and fat, and you don’t have to do much more than apply medium heat and stir….a lot….for a long time. The one rule for making a roux is never walk away from it. You have to treat a roux like a two year old…take your eyes off them for thirty seconds and you can have catastrophe. Any parent who has spent hours removing magic marker from the couch, nail polish from the bathroom vanity, or stood in a pile of long blonde locks because the baby decided to “play beauty shop” with the scissors, will tell you that an unwatched two year old can strike without warning like a tornado, and leave as much destruction in their wake. The same could be said for roux. It burns easily, and that is true in two ways. If the mixture isn’t constantly stirred it will quickly burn and has to be thrown away. The other way it burns is you… literally. The quickest way to tell whether or not a cook makes their own roux or uses the kind that comes from a box and you “just add water” is to check their hands and forearms. A true roux connoisseur will bear the scars of their encounters with “Cajun napalm.”

Ultimately, a roux is just the base ingredient which serves multiple purposes in Creole and Cajun dishes like étouffe and gumbo. The roux serves to add color, flavor, and to thicken the dish. The longer you stir and wait, the darker it becomes and the deeper and richer the flavor develops. An étouffe begins with a “blonde” roux, light in color and nutty in flavor, while different types of gumbos will call for a “peanut butter” or “brick” roux, both descriptions of the color it becomes over time.

For a little over a decade my hobby has been cooking Cajun and Creole recipes (one day I’ll explain the difference), so I’ve had to learn about the layers of ingredients and techniques used in creating and customizing their delicious dishes. There are two non-negotiables, several debatables, and an unlimited number of options in Louisiana cooking. The non-negotiables are the roux and the trinity. Once you’ve mastered the roux, the next step in every Cajun dish is to add diced bell pepper, onion, and celery. These three ingredients are so prevalent in Louisiana cooking that they earned the moniker “the trinity.” I’ve joked that a Cajun mama can’t make a bowl of Cheerios without first making a roux and chopping up the trinity. After that, the debates begin about things like what creole seasonings to add (Zatarain’s, Tony Chachere’s, Konriko, or homemade), whether or not to serve your gumbo with rice or potato salad, and which red beans to use (Camellia’s or Blue Runner). As for the other ingredients, everybody has their own family recipe and diversity is welcomed and celebrated.

Lately, I’ve spent a lot of time with roux and “the trinity” and Cajun recipes. Times of “shelter in place” and quarantines lend themselves to opportunities to make foods that have to be prepared slowly, and in stages. You have less distractions so you can go slow, take your time, and focus on what you’re doing, without a dozen disturbances that could potentially derail your efforts. It’s also been a really good time to sit and think about the ingredients that make up your life and the efforts that go into creating it. Even the greatest chef can’t make chicken stew out of chicken feathers, so the secret to any great dish is the ingredients, not whose making it. Although if you give a great chef quality ingredients they can give you a dinner you’ll be talking about for decades. So what is your life made up of…what are the ingredients…what are you giving God to work with?

I want to tread lightly in the next few sentences because I don’t want to give the impression that any of these things are bad or wrong or that we should feel bad because we feel bad. They aren’t and we shouldn’t. However, there are many things that are all fine and well in and of themselves that aren’t sufficient to center a life around. We have all probably grumbled at the inability to get a haircut, to go to a ball game, or the mall, or do any number of other recreational activities and luxuries that we normally enjoy. Those are all little blessings that we will likely appreciate more once this is all over, but if there is one thing this time has taught us it is that we might have developed an unhealthy emphasis on things of lesser importance. We’ve focused on the garnishing and ignored the steak.

Think about it this way, no one goes to a restaurant and raves over the garnishing. Have you ever once commented on the parsley instead of the steak? Garnishing is the little extra touches that add beauty, but they aren’t intended to sustain us. Fresh parsley can add a nice touch to a meal but no one eats it as the meal. Have we been guilty of doing that with our lives and the extracurriculars? Have little things that are meant to be garnishing become the “main course” of our lives? What is to be the foundation, the roux if you will, of our lives? I’ve had more time than normal to think about this, and I hope you have too. What I’ve come to realize is that the real focus of my life is actually quite simple, just two ingredients: trust and obey. “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13). God has garnished our lives with so many other blessings, each of which I am thankful for, but those things cannot sustain me in times of lack or loss. My relationship with God is only as strong as my commitment to trust and obey. When things are “normal” it is easy to just rely on “spiritual fast food.” We rush in to worship services and then rush out and get back to all the other stuff that consumes our time. Don’t forget that it is your faith and commitment to Christ that will give you the strength you need in hard times. Use this time to slow down, take inventory of the ingredients of your life, and if necessary, start from scratch and give God something that He can use to sustain you.

As good as the best roux is, you don’t make a meal out of it. The roux is just the beginning, the foundation, and you add to it all sorts of other delicious things and garnishing to make a memorable meal. The same is true of faith and obedience. They are the foundation of our relationship with God, and you can’t have a relationship with Him without them, but our Father desires to share with us so much more than that. God’s plan is for faith and obedience to be the base that we build upon with Him. There are so many other ingredients He wants to provide you to use: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness (Galatians 5:22-23; 2 Peter 1:5-7). These are things that God refers to as fruit…fruit that is sweet and delicious, and always in season.