Wherein I Suffer for My Art

Gumbo, as I mentioned in my last post, was served for dinner on Christmas Day in the Moss household, but it’s a very nice dish to have in your repertoire for entertaining people on non-feast days as well. First, it’s pretty much a one-pot meal. It’s traditionally served with rice, and you can add a salad if you’re feeling some post-holiday-indulgence guilt or something, but that’s optional, really. You can also make it a couple of days in advance and just park it in your refrigerator until you need it; if anything, this improves the flavors. It’s a little time consuming, but none of the steps involved is difficult, and since it actually benefits from being made in advance, you can prepare it whenever you have time. You can even spread the prep over several days if you wish. You can make it with meat, with seafood, or with just vegetables, or all of the above. 


I should probably state at this point that I make no claims to authenticity for this recipe; my only claim is that I happen to like it. So obviously, if you hark from Louisiana, and are horrified by the words that follow, you are right, and I am wrong. I like my version anyway. 

I first started making gumbo nearly two decades ago, when someone (I suspect it was Kel) introduced me to Southern Cooking by the late Bill Neal. Neal founded the still-going-strong Crook’s Corner restaurant in Chapel Hill, NC, and was one of the first people to champion southern cooking as a legitimate equal to so-called “haute” cuisine.

Neal was a brilliant cook, and his gumbo recipe is quite elaborate, involving the use of live crabs to make stock and a number of other things that I frankly have never done and never will do. When I re-read it in preparation for writing this, I realized just how far I had drifted from Neal’s original conception. But as he was the inspiration, I wanted to give him a shout-out nonetheless.

The main technique that I took from his recipe was the idea of slowly cooking tomatoes with okra, for nearly an hour, until they are soft and rather sticky. I am using canned tomatoes and frozen okra, which Neal would probably frown upon. But it’s winter in Utah, and I am doing the best I can. Anyway, all I did here was put a can of chopped tomatoes with their juice in a skillet with a 10-ounce bag of frozen chopped okra and let that mixture simmer over low heat for about 45 minutes. The end result looks rather like this.

You can let this cool and refrigerate it for a couple of days, if that’s more convenient. If you are afraid of or don’t like okra, you should leave this blog. Now. Okra serves as a thickener, but it also adds a slickness to the texture which can't be obtained any other way. And given that the word "gumbo" comes from an Angolan word for okra, it pretty much has to be in this dish. 

The next step, and the only part of this that tends to make people a bit skittish, is the cooking of a brown roux. In Cajun and Creole cooking, a roux—a mixture of fat and flour—is cooked very slowly until it is a deep, coppery brown color. Although this lengthy cooking time lessens the roux’s thickening power, it gives it a rich, toasted flavor that is difficult to describe.

I’ve done this in a light-colored pan so you could see it more readily, but any good, heavy skillet, saucepan, or Dutch oven will do. Non-stick isn’t a bad idea, come to think of it.

Put some vegetable oil in the pan (I use canola) and place it over medium heat.

Add an equal volume of all-purpose flour. For this recipe, I used ½ cup each of oil and flour. 



Stir to combine thoroughly. 



Btw, the spatula I’m using is made of heat-resistant silicone. Don’t use a rubber spatula here unless you want the end result to taste like something made by Goodyear. A wooden spoon works fine, though. Keep the heat in the medium-low to medium range. 

Then you just keep stirring patiently until the roux goes from blond…

to light brown…

to medium brown...

to deep brown. 



When it reaches this point, immediately take it off heat and let it cool. The only potential problem is that once the roux starts browning, it gets dark very quickly. So do not attempt to multitask while cooking a brown roux—you need to pay close attention and keep stirring, for a good 15 – 20 minutes (possibly longer, depending on your stove, the pan, etc.). If you're doing this for the first time, you might want to take it off heat when it's still a shade or two lighter than you want—carryover cooking causes it to get a tad darker after you take it off the heat. That said, it’s not really difficult; you just need to pay attention to what you’re doing so the roux doesn’t burn (if it burns, you have to start over). As with the tomato-okra mixture, you can do this ahead of time, cool it, and refrigerate it for several days.

Now, as I mentioned before, your gumbo can contain whatever proteins and veggies that you like. In this case, I’m using chicken and sausage, but you can make a very nice vegetarian version using sautéed bell peppers and zucchini, among other things; Louisiana natives make a lenten version with greens called Gumbo aux Herbes. You can also make a seafood version with shrimp, crab and what not—add them just before serving to make sure they don’t overcook.

But as I said, today we’re using chicken and sausage. I used about ¾ pound of boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into chunks, and about ¾ pound of Andouille sausage, also cut into chunks. The latter is a spicy, cured sausage native to Louisiana. If it’s not available, a smoked sausage or a Kielbasa will do fine. I dusted the chicken with some creole seasoning (available in most grocery stores), and sautéed it and the sausage in a little oil. You just need to brown them; they'll finish cooking at the end of the recipe.

Now then: Louisiana cooks use an aromatic vegetable mixture nicknamed the holy trinity: it consists of chopped onion, chopped celery, and chopped green bell pepper. Because I don’t much like green bell pepper, I committed blasphemy and used a mixture of red, yellow and orange peppers instead. I also added some chili flakes, although fresh chilies or chili paste would work, too. 



If I were a religious man, I might conclude that the Louisiana culinary gods do not take kindly to blasphemy, because while I was chopping the above vegetables, this happened (Mom: look away now).

What have we learned here? Well, for one thing, we've learned that you can get careless while doing some quotidian task that you don’t really think about any more, e.g., chopping an onion. We have also learned that you can stop gumbo preparation, take a trip to urgent care, make several silly jokes about cooking “thumbo” with a nurse, get stitched up, return home and pick up where you left off without doing the gumbo any harm. I did throw the blood-stained onion away, though. It was mocking me.

And yes, I sterilized the knife and the cutting board. What am I, a savage?

Moving right along. Put a light coat of canola oil in a Dutch oven or other large pot, and add the onions, peppers and celery with a generous seasoning of salt and pepper. Put this over medium-low heat. When things start to sizzle a bit, cover the pan and let the vegetables sweat (cook slowly) until soft, 15 minutes or so.

Remove the lid, and add the roux to the pan.

Stir it in thoroughly.

Now add the tomatoes and okra and stir them in thoroughly.

Now pour in 4 cups of chicken broth. Obviously, you’d use vegetable broth if you were making this vegetarian. Raise the heat and bring it to a boil. Simmer it for 10 – 15 minutes. 

If you wanted to, you could stop completely at this point, cool the gumbo, and refrigerate it for a day or two. If you do so, bring it back up to a boil before proceeding, stirring frequently to make sure it doesn't scorch on the bottom. 

Add the chicken and sausage. Lower heat to a simmer and cook until the meats are heated through, maybe 10 minutes or so. If you were using seafood, you’d want to add it at this point. Shrimp, crawfish, crab, scallops and oysters are all delightful in gumbo, and any firm, sturdy white fish (cod, monkfish, pollock, etc.) would be nice; I'm not sure that salmon would work well here, as its flavor is a little strong and might clash with the rest of the dish, but I could be wrong. 

Serve it with rice. The final shots aren’t as pretty as I would’ve liked, but trust me, this is both pretty and delicious in real life. Besides, have YOU ever tried food styling while you have a thumb full of thread and novocaine? Didn’t think so.

Bon appetìt/Lessez les bon temps roulez, y’all.

The inspiration for this dish can be found in Bill Neal’s Southern Cooking. I didn't use a formal recipe, but here are the ingredients I used:

½ cup canola oil, plus more for sautéing

½ cup all-purpose flour

10oz/280g bag frozen sliced okra

15oz/425g can of chopped tomatoes

¾ lb/350g boneless chicken thighs, cut into chunks

¾ lb/350g Andouille sausage, cut into chunks

1 large onion, chopped

2 red and/or yellow bell peppers, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

4 cups/1 l chicken broth

Creole seasoning, to taste

Salt and pepper, to taste