Cooking good gumbo could be grounds for marrying somebody. When my stepdaughter Amelia got married, a dear friend of the groom’s
River Road & Satchmo
family cooked crawfish etouffee for the large rehearsal dinner. The etouffee was so good it brought tears to my eyes…honey-chile, it was speaking my ancestral language. Later on, when the etouffee-maker got divorced, I have to admit thinking, “Hmm, that man can dang sure cook!”
Sometimes you just have to cook it yourself, but I didn’t have the good sense to beg my grandmother to show me how to make gumbo when she could still remember how. So I am a newbie at serious gumbo-making, shooting for improvement every time. Making gumbo is a process that takes the better part of a day, makes a drainrack full of dishes, and results in something like heaven to eat. I consulted about 3 of my cookbooks to get the basics. (1) The Little Gumbo Book, by Gwen McKee; (2) River Road Recipes, by the Junior League of Baton Rouge…a must for lovers of Louisiana cooking; (3) Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic, And Can You Make A Roux?; by Marcelle Bienvenu, food writer and the Queen of Cajun Cooking.
Gumbo Cooking Down
Gumbo making starts with a good roux. A roux is basically fat and flour, stirred constantly until it is very dark brown, but not burnt. If you burn it, you have to throw it out and start over. According to Marcelle Bienvenu, you stir the roux for about as long as it takes to listen to an album. Her father says you stir it for as long as it takes to drink two beers, but I don’t know many people who take 45 minutes to drink two beers.
I had some friends over to eat gumbo and celebrate Mardi Gras. When Morgan saw the gumbo in the pot, he said it looked like mud. “Yeah, greenish mud,” I grinned. There’s nothing worse that thin gumbo! “Some people put okra in it,” says Morgan. Well…the gumbo had slow simmered long enough to disintegrate visible signs of okra, so okra-haters were tricked into trying it.
Now I am going to jump to the end…make your gumbo the day before, so the flavors have time to marry. Gumbo is served in a bowl over rice. Sprinkle some green onions on top, and serve it with a salad and some good French bread. That’s all you need except maybe beer or wine, and a festive attitude.
The basic gumbo ingredients are fat and flour, onions, green peppers,
Remember the Tabasco
celery, sometimes tomatoes, either okra or file’, seafood and/or meat, and herbs & spices. The roux, lots of onion, and the finishing touches are keys to gumbo success. Remember the Tabasco.
*Check out the posts on making Seafood Stock for Gumbo and the Seafood Gumbo Recipe.
Ummm! Sounds great! And I love the title of Bienvenu’s cookbook!
Isn’t that a great title? And it is full of pics of her family life growing up. My Dad corresponds with her, so I have a signed copy. She has a pretty cool website too. The Little Gumbo Book is a good book too, just about gumbo. It has pages on the process of making a roux.
I’m giving away some hardcore Amelia and Drew trade secrets here, but it’s all in the name of full bellies and contented smiles, so here goes…
Drew and I make gumbo together every couple of months as a kind of cathartic marriage counseling session and we’ve started adding a few things that I think really tie the gumbo together. We zest a little lemon and add some of the juice, we always add thyme, and here’s my biggest secret…a little fresh grated nutmeg. We are pretty fierce okra users, though there is a jar of file in the house and sometimes (esp in the winter) that earthy flavor really calls me. We always use chunky grated sea salt and fresh ground black pepper and of course, a bay leaf or two. I just recently read in an article about making red beans and rice that it might be better to use marjoram and thyme in place of a bay leaf to be more true to the French roots of creole cooking, but we go for both. And this will probably cause a purest or two out there to fall over, but we’ve taken to making the roux with olive oil. Deep breaths…it will all be over soon…
Happy gumbo-ing!!
Yum Amelia! Loving the gumbo secrets. I like the nutmeg idea, and the thyme. My other Grandmother would put a slice of lemon in the bottom of the bowl before serving fish chowder…so lemon zest sounds like it would add a burst of fresh to the Louisiana mud of Gumbo. I definitely use olive oil for my roux, and you really can’t be stingy with the oil for roux…compre vous?
As far as bay leaves, I ran out one time and didn’t think about it that much. Then when I finally got some more, it was an aha moment (so that’s the flavor I have been missing!). Before that I just added bay leaves because of force of habit. Now I think they absolutely make a huge wonderful flavor difference.
Here’s a recent flavor addition I have started stirring into black beans…a whisper of cinnamon and cocoa.
You two are the sweetest…cooking gumbo as a marriage counseling session…cooking it up with love is the real secret ingredient.
[...] http://tailgatemarketfanclub.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/cooking-good-gumbo/ [...]