FALL 2022 THE GUMBO ISSUE IT’S ALWAYS GUMBO WEATHER THEY ALL ASKED FOR ROUX SIMPLY Z’BEST LEAH CHASE’S GUMBO Z’HERBES ROUXTEAM
You know what? That gumbo tasted even better the next day. And I didn’t once think about the heat. Donny Rouse, CEO, 3rd Generation
As soon the temperature hits the mid 60s, we start calling it gumbo weather. But when is it really gumbo weather?
We put out some form of gumbo on our hot soup and salad bar at Rouses Markets every day. And it’s our number one seller every day, even on days when there is a heat advisory. Looking at how much gumbo we sell made me think: If we eat gumbo year-round, why don’t more of us make it year-round? You don’t even have to stand over a hot stove to cook it… I made a chicken & sausage gumbo for this issue in June, in the middle of an awful heat wave. It was a weeknight, so I used our Down-Home Gumbo Mix, which is a dry roux with seasonings already blended in — it really cuts down on the cooking time in a steamy summer kitchen.
On weekends I usually don’t like to use any shortcuts because I enjoy spending the whole day in the kitchen, but for convenience, the mix is hard to beat, especially on a weeknight. I also really like our Rouses Roux in a jar. The recipe on our Down-Home Gumbo Mix calls for two quarts of water, or your choice of liquid. Well, I use broth or stock in my gumbo because it adds a bit more flavor and richness. And I happen to like a thinner consistency, so I added three quarts of low sodium chicken broth instead of the two I mentioned. I also went with chicken thighs because dark meat is fattier, has more flavor and is less likely to toughen than white meat, as well as Rabideaux’s Cajun Smoked Pork Sausage, a favorite from Iowa, Louisiana. We sell it in all of our stores.
PHOTO BY CHANNING CANDIES
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Gumbo is one of those foods that’s meant to be shared, like jambalaya, so when I was cooking for the magazine issue, I went ahead and made enough for dinner that night, with leftovers for our magazine team to try it the next day. Now, I really did plan on bringing some to work, but when I woke up the next day, I still had an envie for gumbo. I have to admit, I ended up keeping the leftovers and just sharing the recipe. I couldn’t help myself!
It’s GumboAlwaysWeather
HOW DO YOU GUMBO? ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Most of us agree that gumbos must have onions, bell peppers and celery — the Holy Trinity of Cajun cooking — but that’s about all we agree on. If you, like me, think putting tomatoes in gumbo, even okra gumbo, is sacrilegious, keep reading; this side of the magazine is for you. If you are #teamtomato, flip over this issue and start from the other side.
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Learn more about the tradition and find recipes at REDBEANSANDRICEMONDAYS.COM
Hearty red beans and fluffy rice. That’s a delicious duo that will make every Monday better.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Classic Cajun dishes generally call for medium grain white rice. It can go in just about anything, though it is particularly suited to something like étouffée, with its oftentimes rich and thick sauce. If you are preparing a gumbo, on the other hand, you might consider a stickier grain of rice. Gumbo is a thinner broth. Short grain rice releases more starch as it’s cooked, and that starch is what makes it sticky.
Red Beans & Rice Mondays began in the 19th century as a way for New Orleans families to make a simple, delicious meal during the busiest day of their week. Easy to cook and easier to love, the dish is now a beloved Louisiana staple and perfect for any busy schedule!
SPAHR’S ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Founded in 1968 in the fishing community of Des Allemands (“the Catfish Capital of the Universe”), Spahr’s Seafood has three locations in Louisiana: the original, in Des Allemands, and Galliano and Thibodaux. The restaurant is known for these signature items: “The Original” catfish chips, their Bloody Mary, and seafood gumbo, which is made with a dark roux, shrimp, crabmeat and two types of sausage (smoked and hot).
Table of Contents In Every Issue 1 It’s Always Gumbo Weather by Donny Rouse 5 Letter from the Editor by Marcy Nathan 7 Cookin’ on Hwy. 1 with Tim Acosta 9 Are You Still a Cajun If You Microwave Your Roux? by Ali Rouse Royster WhatchaCookin’? 14 They All Asked for Roux by David W. Brown 16 Thin Cajun Gumbo by Sarah Baird 19 Alphabet Soup by Sarah Baird A to Z illustrations by Kacie Galtier 27 Simply Z’Best by Marcelle Bienvenu 28 Sunday Supper by Poppy Tooker Holy Thursday by Poppy Tooker 31 Monday’s Red Beans, Tuesday’s Gumbo by David W. Brown 33 Tastes Like ’homme by Marcelle Bienvenu 40 Prejeans: Simply Cajun by Sarah Baird 41 State Fare by Sarah Baird 45 Duck, Duck, Gumbo by Sarah Baird 47 Squirrel Away This Recipe for Hunting Season by Don Dubuc 49 Gumbo Festivals & Cook-Offs Recipes &Cooking 9 Mom’s Microwave Roux 27 Leah Z’HerbesGumboChase’sZ’HerbesMarcelle’sGumbo(without a roux) 32 Red Bean Gumbo 35 Mr. B’s Gumbo Ya Ya 36 Marcelle’s Shrimp and Egg Gumbo 37 Shrimp Stock 45 Chef Nathan Richard’s Duck, Oyster and Tasso Gumbo 47 Don’s Squirrel and Rabbit Combo Gumbo Marketing & Advertising Director Tim Acosta Creative Director & Editor Marcy Nathan Art Director, Layout & Design Eliza Schulze Illustrator Kacie Galtier Marketing Coordinator Harley Breaux Copy Editors Patti AdrienneStallardCrezo Advertising & Marketing Amanda StephanieKennedyHopkinsNancyBessonTarynClementMaryAnnFlorey Design Intern Peyton finch COVER PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO
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MCWARE ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Magnalite cookware is no longer in production, but we sell a great alternative. Mamou, Louisiana-based McWare Cookware’s aluminum pots are sturdy, like Magnalite, and built to last. They can go from refrigerator to stovetop to oven and are perfect for gumbo. You can find McWare Cookware at most Rouses Markets.
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Palace has a dress code, so instead of going straight to the restau rant, I made a stop at my house Uptown to change out of my jeans. My cute little neighbor, Alexander, who I call Salamander, approached as I was getting out of the car. “Whatcha doing?” he asked. “Bringing ducks to my friends at Command er’s Palace to make gumbo,” I told him. “Ducks! Can I see?” “They are all wrapped up, but let me look.” One bag, the Rouse Markets bag, was loosely tied, so I handed it to him. “Look,” I said, “this one still has feathers!” Salamander opened the bag, peered inside, and screamed, “Those aren’t feathers, that’sYoufur!”know the expression: If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…then it probably is a duck? Well, Salamander was right, this wasn’t a duck. It was a whole squirrel — head, skin, tail and all. Frozen solid.Squirrels had the run of the place, at least the yard, at my dad’s house. They brazenly ran along the branches of the old oak trees that shaded the pool. Not content with acorns, they stole seeds out of the birdfeeders and oranges from the trees, which dad bought in Plaquemines Parish and planted outside the sunroom. Dad couldn’t stand the squirrels. He offered a bounty to anyone who shot one. Clearly, someone got one. No one would admit to putting the whole squirrel in the freezer. Lots of people worked at my dad’s house at the time; if I stopped by for lunch, there was always a crowd eating in the kitchen. I guess anyone could have been the culprit, though they all denied it. I think Melvin, the gardener, was the likely culprit because he actually ate squirrel. Trash pickup at my house wasn’t for another few days, and I didn’t want to leave a frozen squirrel defrosting and decom posing in my garbage can, so I threw the Rouses bag in the freezer and slammed the doorLater,shut.when I got to Commander’s, I told them the story. Danny Trace told me, “Oh, don’t worry, my mom kept sparrows in the freezer.” (Sparrows?)
Letter from the Editor
PHOTO BY CHANNING CANDIES
By Marcy Nathan, Creative Director A friend of mine at Commander’s Palace was looking for wild duck; a guest chef (Danny Trace, then the executive chef of Brennan’s in Houston), wanted to make a wild duck gumbo. There are plenty of wing shots and hunters at Rouses Markets, but before I could even call Donald or Donny Rouse or anyone else, my dad, eavesdropping on my phone call, piped up with an offer: “I have a freezer full of mallards the judge gave me. The chef can have them if he saves me a bowl of that gumbo.”Mydad loved gumbo. Every year, he stood in line for Prejean’s Pheasant, Quail and Andouille Gumbo at Jazz Fest. He ordered gumbo everywhere he went. A few years back when his blood pressure got too high, and his doctor told him no more soup, my dad — ever the lawyer — tried to argue that gumbo wasn’t soup. There are culinary historians like Lois Eric Elie who would agree that gumbo is neither soup nor stew, but its own category of food (read more at www. rouses.com). But like soup, it was still too salty.The ducks were in the freezer in the log cabin, the original house on Dad’s property, which served as a guest house. He loaded me down with more than a dozen ducks, including one in a Rouses Markets plastic bag. (Do you, like me, carry all of your bags of groceries on two arms rather than make twoCommander’strips?)
SQUIRREL AND RABBIT GUMBO ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Don Dubuc has a recipe for squirrel and rabbit gumbo in this issue (see page 47). I won’t be making it, but you should!
MARCELLE BIENVENU Marcelle Bienvenu is a cookbook author and food writer. A native of St. Martinville, in the heart of
LE AR N MOR E ABOUT OU R BR AN DS AT WW W. ROUSE S .COM POTATO SALAD 6 ROUSES FALL 2022
Contributors SARAH BAIRD Sarah Baird is the author of multiple books, including New Orleans Cocktails and Flask, which was released in summer 2019. A 2019 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, her work has been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Saveur, Eater, Food & Wine and The Guardian, among others. Previously, she served as restaurant critic for the New Orleans alt-weekly, Gambit Weekly, where she won Critic of the Year in 2015 for her dining reviews.
PHOTO BY CHANNING CANDIES
PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO PATTON’S SAUSAGE ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Patton’s Sausage Company has been producing their hot sausage for decades, first in New Orleans, now in Bogalusa. It’s so good, people order it on po-boys by name (I like mine dressed, with cheese.) Patton’s adds a distinctive sausage flavor to gumbo that’s different from smoked sausage, which I also use. Roll the Patton’s hot sausage patty into small meatballs, then bake or pre-fry them to get the grease out. Don’t add them straight into the pot, or you’ll end up with greasy gumbo. If you don’t feel like making gumbo, Li’l Dizzy’s Cafe on Esplanade in Treme uses Patton’s in theirs — and you get a half of a crab in every bowl.
– Brian Pollard, Consultant, Rouses Markets
— Jimmy Buffett E veryone knows I’m a big Parrot Head. I’m a longtime fan and follower of Jimmy Buffett. You can flip to page 9 on the tomato side of this issue and read all about him. I’m also a big gumbo head. I will eat just about any kind of gumbo — chicken & sausage, shrimp & okra, duck & andouille, rabbit, red bean.
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Marcelle Bienvenu has a story and recipe on page 36 about a dried and fresh shrimp gumbo in which eggs are poached; I like my poached egg on an English muffin, with Hollandaise sauce, but hey, I would give it a try.The gumbo in the photo on this page is my dad’s version. I used to love watching him make it on Christmas Day. He’d start with the roux in one pot, add the trinity, and then stir in the stock. He’d brown the the gumbo pot. He’d also throw in cocktail smokies for extra flavor.
The nice thing about gumbo is you can stretch it out to feed more people if extra company drops by. You can always add more water to build the liquid back up, add a little more meat or seafood, or drop in eggs like Marcelle does. Dad’s one-pot Christmas gumbo would turn into a two-pot gumbo because he put so much into it. And before you judge the little smokies in his gumbo: I know people who put chicken wings — even chicken gizzards — in gumbo, and plenty of people add meatballs. My friend Brian Pollard makes meatballs with Patton’s Hot Sausage, which is something I have to try. You could probably put pork There isn’t a right or wrong way when it comes to cooking gumbo — and no wrong way to eat it. My wife Cindy and I like potato salad with our gumbo, but we don’t put it in the same bowl. Cindy makes a hearty chicken & sausage gumbo with a dark roux that can take hours to cook, and a lighter seafood & okra gumbo with fresh shrimp, lump crabmeat and plenty of crab claws. She makes fresh potato salad from scratch to go with each kind, and serves it warm, never refrigerated. I layer the bowls, rice on the bottom, gumbo on top. We add the filé to it at the table. A spoonful of potato salad just passes through the gumbo. Hey, as a kid I used to dip my cookies in milk — now I dip my potato salad in gumbo.
Cookin’ on Hwy.
By Tim Acosta, Advertising & Marketing Director “At midnight in the Quarter, or noon in Thibodaux, I will play for gumbo.”
Authentic Italian flavors, no passport required.
“You need a deep, heavy, heat-resistant microwave dish.” —Karen WHAT YOU WILL NEED: ¾ cup Rouses Vegetable Oil 1 cup all-purpose flour HOW TO PREP: In a large, deep, microwaveable dish, whisk together ingredients until smooth. Microwave on high for 4 minutes; remove from microwave and stir. (Be careful, dish will be very hot). Microwave for another 3 minutes, then remove and stir. Microwave for another 2 minutes, then remove and stir. Microwave for 1 minute, then remove and stir. At this point your roux should be a nice caramel color and ready to use in your gumbo or other recipe. so
Are You Still a Cajun If You Microwave Your Roux? ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The basic formula for a roux is one part fat to one part flour. The fat you use will affect the final flavor of whatever you are cooking. Butter is perfect for white and blond roux; you can even use butter to make brown roux. If you want to use butter in a darker roux for a gumbo, mix it with a high-heat oil,
By Ali Rouse Royster, 3rd Generation I like to cook, but I’m no culinary purist. I’d like a leisurely afternoon in the kitchen — cranking some tunes, making my mise en place, following a recipe, etc. — but as a working mom of three grade schoolers, there is nothing leisurely about my afternoons! So I’ll use a good shortcut if it doesn’t sacrifice too much of the end product. (I get this from my mother, Karen, the shortcut queen.) Why bake a whole chicken when I can pick up a rotisserie chicken? Why spend time chopping vegetables when they’re already cut and packaged in the produce depart ment? (Sometimes I see what’s available and decide on a quick supper from that — hello, stir fry mix! Shall we make tofu bowls tonight?) And (I hope this doesn’t get my Cajun card revoked) there’s no easier recipe to cheat on than gumbo. My husband and I both love a good gumbo. Any kind, any method, any weather! My picky-eater middle child will request chicken and sausage gumbo (hold the sausage, or chop it so tiny she doesn’t notice it!); it’s a departure from the peanut butter sandwiches or mac and cheese she requests for every other meal. So gumbo is always in our rotation. We have made gumbo all of the ways, using any number of shortcuts. Rotisserie chicken is a no-brainer. The roux, though; that’s a labor of love. Maybe one day I’ll stand at my stove with my wooden spoon babysitting a roux, but that day is not today, my friends. I love the Rouses Gumbo Mix, and I love the jarred Rouses Roux. And I am particularly fond of the Karen Rouse School of Cooking Microwave Roux (patent pending ), which is a double-doozy for 1) being a great timesaver and 2) using flour and oil from my pantry! If you aren’t worried about losing your Cajun card — and listen, mine is laminated and safe, so I wouldn’t worry too much! — enjoy this step-by-step guide to my momma’s microwave roux. Her maiden name’s Barrilleaux, so you know it’s bayou-approved.
MOM’S MICROWAVE ROUX
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– Mary Ann Florey, Graphic Designer
When someone asks about my life in Thibodaux, I say it’s like I am studying abroad. I’m from Mobile, Alabama, so the South is not new to me. But since moving from the bay to the bayou, I’ve realized there’s just something about Thibodaux. The food, music, language, culture and people are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. My friend Dane made the gumbo on the cover; our neighbor Perry might bring in a tray of fresh-fried choupique he caught earlier; and a sunny day during crawfish season is just begging for a boil in the backyard. That’s just Thibodaux for you. I’d lived here eight months when Ida hit. Afterwards, I moved in with Matt, Joe and Ethan — and these guys, now my great friends, really opened the door to the good times in Thibodaux for me. I try to immerse myself in the local culture. I keep a running list of Cajun French words that I can toss around in casual conversation. And my bucket list of things to do, like my Cajun lexicon, just keeps growing. For instance, frogging is a high priority up here, along with skinning a raccoon and kayaking down Bayou Lafourche, which runs right through town. To sum it all up (using my Cajun): Life in Thibodaux, I like that, me.
Once we moved back (farther) South, I embraced my Cajun roots further. Every winter, I look forward to waking up before the sun on Mardi Gras day to participate in Courir de Mardi Gras; I still like to brag about catching the chicken on a rainy Mardi Gras morning in 2017. There’s just nothing like a steaming bowl of fresh gumbo on Mardi Gras day, after a long morning of walking along country roads with a hundred of your closest friends.
For those of you who haven’t heard of red bean gumbo, it’s a creamy, red bean soup mixture that has a roux flavor like gumbo. I love to talk about red bean gumbo because it’s delicious and combines two of my favorite meals in one! When I was growing up in Luling, my family was always very serious about their beans & rice: red beans, white beans, lima beans — you name it — and of course, we were always equally serious when it came to our gumbos. When we evacuated ahead of Hurricane Katrina to my nanny’s house it was my uncle’s turn to cook dinner, and he did not disappoint us with his wonderful red bean gumbo. I still remember that first bite; it was so good that I quickly went back for seconds. Many of my cousins cook their red bean gumbo using his recipe. They use canned beans when they’re short on time, and dried red beans when they have plenty of time to let the beans cook down slow and velvety…yum!
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In the tomatoes vs. roux debate, I’m #teamroux. I love a good, dark gumbo like the one on this side’s cover — and I love-love a good, dark gumbo poured over a bowl of fresh potato salad. (Although I hear that’s controversial here in New Orleans.) My love of gumbo runs deep, and my identity runs deeper than Art Director at Rouses: One of my secret talents is roller skating. When I joined the Chattanooga Roller Girls a few years back, I was tasked with choosing a strong skater name. My Southwest Louisiana heritage came into play, and I became “Roux” while on wheels. Carrying a part of my Cajun identity onto the track helped me channel my inner roux-ga-roux (folklore swamp monster, to those not familiar).
– Amanda Kennedy, Senior Manager Brand & Marketing Strategy
– Eliza Schulze, Art Director
– Harley Breaux, Marketing Coordinator My pawpaw always said Mamie would put a big pot at the end of the table and, every night, the leftovers and table scraps went into the pot. On Sunday she’d make a gumbo.
– Kacie Galtier, Designer & Illustrator
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In New Orleans, it’s all about what you grew up with, and hot soup on a summer day just feels like home to me.
– Taryn Clement, E-commerce Manager I don’t put okra in my gumbo, which absolutely horrified my mother-in-law, who was a pure Cajun from Pierre Part; s he barely spoke English. She said, “Mais, if you don’t put gumbo in da gumbo dat’s not a gumbo!” (Gumbo is the African and Cajun word for okra.)
I love a thin gumbo, and for extra zing, I always add a capful of white vinegar directly into my bowl. I inherited the habit from my father, who always “just adds a little somethin’ different” to nearly every home-cooked meal (one example being ketchup in mac & cheese – don’t knock it ’til you try it). Not only am I #TeamRoux, but I’m also #TeamRicelessGumbo. Given that I’ve lived south of I-10 my whole life, you’d think rice would be ingrained (pun definitely intended) in my DNA – but I protest. Sure, cutting the rice slashes the carbs, but it also allows me to quite literally eat double the amount of gumbo. And that is something I really love to do!
– Peyton Finch, Design Intern Gumbo is a year-round favorite in my family. It really doesn’t matter what’s happening with the weather: We are currently under a heat advisory, and I just had seafood gumbo. We like to use Autin’s Gumbo Mix — it’s my mother-in-law’s recipe and, believe it or not, she doesn’t use a roux. You really can’t taste the difference though, and we love it. My husband makes it the best. When he cooks his gumbo, my son likes to watch and pretendcook along with him in his play kitchen.
– Stephanie Hopkins, Senior Graphic Designer Heat index over 112 degrees — ask my husband to cook a gumbo. Anyone else?
– Nancy Besson, Graphic Designer
Like gumbo, pho has no particular eating weather or season. And despite its hot broth and savory fixings, pho is eaten throughout the year, at any time of day. Every time I visited my Maw Maw’s house as a child, there would be a warm, delicious pot of beef and chicken pho for our family, with a hot pot of rice made especially for me. And just as it is with gumbo, everyone makes their pho a little differently. People are particular about the choice of protein and toppings for their pho, which resembles the debate between chicken or seafood gumbo.
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They All Asked for Roux
By David W. Brown
“Gumbo is such an opinionated dish,” says Chef Eric Cook, the owner of the restaurants Gris-Gris on Magazine Street and Saint John on Decatur Street in New Orleans. “If you had to pick one food in New Orleans, the number-one most scrutinized, debated, argued dish would be gumbo. Everyone believes theirs is the right one, and everyone believes theirs is the most traditional gumbo ever.”
A fter 30 years in the New Orleans restaurant industry, Cook has a few opinions of his own about the best way to make it. “I’ve worked in New Orleans restaurants my entire life and my entire career, and I’ve made gumbo with every big restaurant in the city,” he says. Much of that time was making other people’s gumbo, whether from family recipes or the recipes from storied New Orleans chefs of the past. When Chef Cook planted his own flag, he looked for culinary inspiration west of the city. “Our menus say ’Paroisse de Vermilion-inspired.’ We make Vermilion Parish-inspired gumbo, which is way different than New Orleans gumbo,” he says. “Here, there’s a tendency toward seafood gumbos, okra, filé — that sort of thing. In Lafayette, it’s all about the roux. The dark, dark, dark, dark, dark roux. It’s not a thick stew, though. It’s a little lighter in consistency and way deeper in flavor.”
Cook explains that chicken and andouille lend themselves to textures and flavor combinations in gumbo that are hard to beat. “We roast whole chickens for the gumbo,” he says. “Our roux is dark, dark, dark.” At Gris-Gris and Saint John, he and his kitchen team make a 48-hour chicken stock for the base of the gumbo. “We take chicken bones and put them in the oven until they almost burn, and we put them in the pot with some celery, some onions, some carrots, and we let the whole thing go for two days to get that dark, almost ‘holiday gravy’-smelling stock.”
Since he first started making it, his recipe has been a benchmark in the New Orleans culinary world. “I haven’t touched this recipe in almost 20 years,” he says. “I don’t change it. I don’t venture out.”
Today we still feel a strong Creole influence, Cook explains. “It goes back to the French, when those big creams came in, and the butters came in, but that Cajun influence is still in town because everything here has always been a matter of availability.” The waters and woods around the city provided seafood and wild game for New Orleanians since the first nail went into the first frame of the first house here. Because New Orleans is a port city, the influx of people both free and enslaved brought culinary influences together in ways unlike anywhere else in the world. “Africans and Haitians brought so many dishes into New Orleans that have now evolved into a staple culture,” Cook says. Immigrants from every corner of the world in turn brought
For Cook, rather, simple is best when it comes to gumbo. “I think gumbo sometimes becomes overcomplicated because it has so many ingredients in it. For us, it’s simple: the trinity, sausage, chicken, a great stock and a great roux. That’s it, and that’s where we kind of draw the line. Like, this is what it is . Our gumbo speaks for itself. You can taste the sausage. You can taste the chicken. You get the roux. You under stand its aroma, the aromatics, that deep, dark chicken stock. And it’s just simple and delicious, not overpowering. It’s something that you just remember forever once you eat it.”
In the gumbo itself, simplicity is his watchword. He adds celery, onion and bell pepper to the pot, and uses andouille. The “dark, dark, dark” roux and chicken stock go in, along with a little bit of Worces tershire, a little bit of Creole seasoning and a little bit of hot sauce — and that’s it. “We are not trying to overthink it. It’s simple things done extremely well,” he says. The depth of the gumbo speaks for itself. “You can taste every little nuance, from that little bit of heat brought in by the sausage, to that dark, profound flavor of the roux. It’s a very straightforward approach to bringing about very complex, very deep layers of flavor.”
PHOTO BY ROMERO & ROMERO
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A few bright herbs go on top, some green onion, and the whole thing is brought together with Louisiana rice. This differs a bit from the Lafayette style of a potato salad-driven gumbo recipe. (“You know, I’m a big fan of potato salad, but in New Orleans it’s a tough sell,” Cook says.)
New Orleans has stood for more than three centuries, and its unique history has forged the only real and overarching metropolitan cuisine in the United States. “Chicago can keep the hot dog, New York can have the pizza. California can have the avocado,” says Cook. “New Orleans has Creole. Our city is a melting pot of ethnic and genera tional influences — African, Haitian, Spanish, German, Italian, Asian, French. We have had so many different, powerful contributors to our cuisine, evolved over the last 300 years.”
Seafood gumbo, he says, leads to something a little bit thicker, with a flavor profile that leans hard into its seafood stock, and the pronounced flavors and textures of shellfish, crabmeat and shrimp. “I’m not going to say it’s bad because I love a good seafood gumbo, I love eating half a crab out of a gumbo. But for me, it should not be as thick, and not be as spicy. People can add their own hot sauce.”
Traditional New Orleans cuisine is something you get at restau rants, but is also something that families make at home, and have keen and nuanced understandings of. Which is perhaps the main reason for the intensity of the gumbo discussion. “In Louisiana, everyone’s got a gumbo recipe, and everyone’s grandmother’s recipe is better than everybody else’s,” Cooks explains. “The lines that cross over into family recipes — it’s like holy ground. So I always tell folks if I can be the second-best in Louisiana — if my gumbo’s almost as good as your grandma’s or your grandpa’s gumbo, then there is no better trophy for me in the world, because it’s such a family tradition, such a source of pride.”
And while cooks throughout South Louisiana still love to bicker over whether okra or filé is the best gumbo thickener, one thing they can agree on is that both ingredients were used to make luxurious, decadent gumbos — one (filé) used by the Choctaw, the other (okra) by Africans — long before French-Acadians brought the concept of a roux into regular rotation. In fact, inside 1901’s landmark recipe tome, The Picayune Creole Cook Book , okra and filé are discussed at length in the nine-recipelong gumbo section, but only two of the recipes — shrimp gumbo filé and oyster gumbo — involve a roux, with recipes like penny-pinching cabbage gumbo and squirrel gumbo going completely roux-less.Aprimary reason that rouxbased gumbo remained something of a rarity in colonial Louisiana and up until the turn of the 20th century is that flour was a pricey import, and butter was expensive — really expensive. The original roux primarily used different types of lard in place of butter or oil, including, if you can believe it, bear lard. Also as a result of these sky-high ingredient costs, roux-based gumbos found more prominent footing in restaurant-heavy urban port cities (ahem, New Orleans) than on the home-cooking tables of Southwest Louisiana, where “thin” gumbo is still winning over new generations of fans with each bowl.
Thin GumboCajun By Sarah Baird A sk most people what’s truly necessary when making a good gumbo, and the majority would say that a thick, rich roux is as vital as the pot the dish is cooked in. For centuries along the Gulf Coast, though, gumbo and its ancestral versions were made without a roux (gasp!). In many homes across rural stretches of Acadiana today, you’ll still find roux-less, or “thin” gumbo served with regularity. “If you ask folks in Terrebonne Parish if they make roux for their gumbo, most of them will say no. Gumbos in this part of the state don’t use roux as a thickener. Really thick, dark-roux gumbos are more common in restaurants than in Cajun homes,” writes Melissa Martin in her James Beard Awardwinning book, Mosquito Supper Club: Cajun Recipes from a Disappearing Bayou. “I had never had a gumbo dark, rich and thick from roux until I lived in New Orleans and tried the ones served in restaurants there. You won’t find a roux-based gumbo in Cajun homes on the bayou, but roux certainly have their place in Louisianaclassicdishes.”
their own ideas of how to cook, and their own ingredients, and that likewise yielded new dishes of increasing elegance and sophistication. “To be a chef in this city means to always be a teacher, and to always be a student,” says Chef Cook. “And always remember: You’re just a cook. The term ‘chef,’ to me, is just a leadership kind of role. I’m still learning every day, and I’m still teaching every day but it’s an obligation, I believe, because the culinary world is always changing and being Americaninfluenced.”citieslikeNew
York are prone to culinary fads, and those fads radiate nationally. “What happens in New York is that new fads emerge at insanely expensive restaurants. But food is never a fad here. Ever. This is what we are. This is what we’ve always been. We were a food town before people knew what a food town was. And the preservation of that culture, the preservation of that history, the preservation of that story is essential.”
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Creamy deviled egg potato salad with paprika•ROW 3: Cajun Potato Salad We add a kick of seasoning to our Cajun potato salad•ROW 4: Country Potato Salad with Egg Our country potato salad with egg has a thicker cut of potato•ROW 5: Classic Potato Salad with Egg Classic home-style potato salad with egg•ROW 6: Loaded Baked Potato Salad We’ve loaded this baked potato salad with everything•ROW 7: New Orleans Style Potato Salad New Orleans potato salad with red potatoes, eggs and sweet pickle relish
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POTATO, POTATEAUX (From top left) ROW 1: Rouses Mustard Potato Salad A traditional, Southern-style yellow mustard potato salad•ROW 2: Deviled Egg Potato Salad
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D IS FOR DARK ROUX
A type of sausage perfected in the parishes that snake along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, andouille’s dense, smoky depth is almost as synonymous with gumbo as the roux itself. Combining the best of German porky engineering with a dash of French je ne sais quoi, andouille’s sometimes peppery, often garlic-flecked flavor profile plays nicely with almost all other ingredients typically found in gumbos to form some of the most classic ingredient pairings around. (Sausage and chicken gumbo, anyone?) Sure, there are other types of hot sausage tossed in a gumbo every now and again — particularly among nontraditionalists — but nothing can replace the hearty ubiquity of andouille. An “andouille trail” even recently launched in Louisiana’s River Parishes so smoked meat devotees can get their porcine fill from local purveyors.
Alphabet Soup By Sarah Baird No matter where you travel along the byways and backroads of the Gulf Coast, practically every person you encounter will have big opinions about how to make the best gumbo. Some swear by okra as a gumbo thickener; others would almost come to blows over the superiority of filé powder. At a dinner, it’s common to see second cousins bickering over whether or not a roux spoon matters — and who gets to inherit their grand-mère’s heirloom gumbo cauldron. For every person with roots in the “gumbo belt” of South Louisiana, there is a one-of-a-kind take on what makes gumbo truly sing. By my reasoning, though, there are no wrong answers, just more “Why didn’t I think of that?” permutations of techniques and ingredients to learn. The A-Z alphabet of gumbo aims to provide a fresh does of inspiration — and maybe a little nostalgia — for when you’re cooking your next pot. There are enough gumbo iterations to keep stirring up new versions well into your golden years, melding together timehonored tradition with modern tweaks and question:mindreadbestlearned-in-the-gumbo-trenchespractices.Whoknows,whatyounextmightevenchangeyourabouthowtoanswerthatage-oldHowdo you gumbo? A IS FOR ANDOUILLE Andouille makes no secret Of its smoke and its spice, So when it comes to gumbo, Chefs don’t think twice.
White, blonde, to brown, Watch it close until dark, Every gumbo lover knows The roux gives it its spark. An expertly crafted roux serves as the flavorful foundation for most modern gumbos (even if there’s a little filé added in), but what color the roux should be is the source of much debate among home cooks throughout South Louisiana. Some people swear that it should be the color of a brown paper bag; others are aiming for a roux that’s chocolate-bar hued; some even take it to the almost-burned edge. No matter where you fall on the sepiatinged rainbow that is the great roux debate, everyone is just working to make their roux look half as good as their grandmother’s version.
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C IS FOR CHICKEN No poultry can top Chicken’s place in the pot, Whether seafood or sausage, It’s tossed in a lot. Out of all the proteins from both land and sea that grace the gumbo pot, chicken is the most underrated. It doesn’t have the tongue-tickling burn of hot sausage, nor does it come with the innate brininess of seafaring crustaceans. It’s a plain Jane in the company of rock stars. No matter the recipe, though, it’s always there for you — just waiting for a little flicker of attention. So, next time you’re dreaming up a gumbo, why not give your chicken a little bit of extra loving: a spice-rich rubdown or a day at the seasoning spa. And if you find that your pampered chicken brings a whole new element to your gumbo, maybe next up on your list will be making a Cajun-style whole hen version.
B IS FOR BREAD Dipping crackers in gumbo Is classic — it’s true But for many of us, Nothing but French bread will do. For some gumbo lovers, the crunch of regular ol’ saltines — or even a handful of puffy oyster crackers — is sufficient for dipping into the bowl. It’s straightforward; it’s trusted; it’s not fussy. It won’t turn any heads in a restaurant or make your friends give you side-eye. For others, though, sopping up every last drop from the bottom of the gumbo bowl is the only option — and that’s where a nice, thick piece of French bread comes in. If you’re not afraid to get a little messy, and look a little gluttonous, might I suggest swapping out ho-hum crackers for a pillowy hunk of bread? It will ensure your gumbo is good to the last drop.
K IS FOR K-PAUL’S Paul ToBringingMadePrudhommegumboasensation,Cajunflavortheentirenation.
G IS FOR GENEROSITY
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Traditionalists gasp At gumbo competitions, When newfangled ingredients Are on exhibition. Gumbo competitions tend to bring out everyone’s creative side — the goal is to show the judges something they’ve never seen before, after all — but when you’re a gumbo purist, there can be a sense that too many nontraditional items can, quite literally, spoil the pot. Whether home cooks compete at neighborhood charity events or the World Championship Gumbo Cookoff in New Iberia, there are those who fall firmly in the “keep it classic” camp…and others willing to see what gumbo can do. The best way to judge the outside-the-box versions is on the only merit that really counts: Is it delicious?
J IS FOR JAMBALAYA A close cousin to gumbo, That much is true, But if you mix these two up — Then shame on you. Both dishes involve rice, a bevy of meats and a roux, sure. But be forewarned: There are few greater sins than conflating jambalaya and gumbo. If you’re uninitiated in the ways of the Cajun or Creole table, consider yourself warned. (You’ll thank me later.)
E IS FOR EGG Unheard of to most, But folks in Eunice — they swear Adding hard-boiled egg Gives their gumbo some flair. The one-off additions plopped into to a bowl of gumbo on a parish-by-parish basis can seem odd to those uninitiated, but when taken as part of a larger gumbo tapestry, they work to bring a hyperlocal unique ness to Louisiana’s gumbo making. Across the Cajun Prairie — particularly in Eunice — hard-boiled chicken or quail eggs are a common addition to gumbo, while some people in Avoyelles and Rapides Parishes swear that a mashed sweet potato makes all the difference in gumbo quality. Pickles of all kinds also pop up on occasion, lending a zippy tang to a dish known for its richness.
And while some envelope-pushers might try to use both okra and filé in a gumbo, most South Louisianians agree: There are filé folks and there are okra people, and this is an ingredient feud where never the twain shall meet.
I IS FOR INGENUITY
F IS FOR FIL É Don’t be stingy with the filé If you want your gumbo thick, This charmed herbal powder Always does the trick. Filé powder — or gumbo filé — is an herbal, dried-and-ground powder made from the leaves of the sassafras tree, and when you first spot it in the spice aisle, it looks a whole lot like a big jar of dust. But one shake into your gumbo and it’s obvious that this is the sort of magic dust that Cajun fairy tales are made of, thickening the gumbo so smoothly and effortlessly that few other methods can compare. That is, unless you’re in “camp okra” as the superior gumbo thickener. In his 2019 book, Gumbo Life: Tales from the Roux Bayou, Ken Wells notes that filé’s role as a thickener for gumbo-like dishes extends back centuries, with an early Native American dish along the Gulf Coast combining saltwater scooped from the Gulf, filé and freshly caught shrimp into a stew-like meal.
Every host will tell you, Get another bowl! Gulf Coast families know Gumbo is good for the soul. Let’s be honest: If you’re invited to a meal in South Louisiana, there’s no way you’ll walk away from the table without feeling at least a little overstuffed. Call it the curse of the generous host, but more is more when it comes to meals along the Gulf Coast: If you’re not going back for a second bowl of gumbo, someone will encourage you to do so. Maybe even several people. After all, if you’re not cleaning your bowl and headed back for round two, the cook might not think you’re enjoying it…and there’s no need to risk offending anyone.
H IS FOR HOT SAUCE Looking for a kick of heat Or a five-alarm fire? Splashing hot sauce on your gumbo Will take the spice levels higher. We all know someone who is a true hot sauce head: a person so deep into capsaicin levels and the Scoville scale that practically every other condiment in their house has been replaced in favor of the spicy stuff. They put hot sauce on everything — and gumbo is no exception. Even those without the palate of a fire-breathing dragon enjoy a dash (or 12) of hot sauce in their gumbo, whether it’s Crystal, hot pepper vinegar or some homemade concoction that could likely singe off someone’s eyebrows. The amount of hot sauce people stir into gumbo might seem excessive at times, but never fear — the gumbo can take it.
N IS FOR NECKS Turkey neck gumbo Has a cult that’s devoted, One bite — they say — And your current version’s demoted. Those who have been in the gumbo business for some time know that when it comes to different varieties of meat in a gumbo, there really are no hard-and-fast rules. Dried shrimp? Gizzards? Oysters? Toss it all in a pot and see how it tastes! “I discovered in my travels and in scores of interviews that there is widespread ignorance — mine included — about what other people put in their gumbo. I learned from older gumbo cooks in particular that the protein that went into the dish in previous decades could be far more eclectic and exotic than today’s repertoire of chicken, duck, sausage and shellfish,” writes Ken Wells in Gumbo Life, noting that a hairdresser once told him her maw-maw put skinned snake meat into a gumbo. “[John] Folse told me that back in his grandfather’s day, his family, who helped to settle Louisiana’s River Parishes, put squirrel, smoked raccoon and rabbit in their gumbos — whatever they could catch.”
L IS FOR LIQUOR Sipping a beer with your gumbo Is as classic as it comes, But some mix it up With scotch, sherry or rum. Beer and gumbo go together like football and tailgating, but what about all the other drink pairings? For a seafood gumbo, many people prefer to pair it with an off-dry Riesling, while earthier, sausage-heavy versions can mesh comfortably with an Albariño. Cocktails are another story; I’ve always been partial to a La Louisiane with mine, which stirs up rye, sweet vermouth, Benedictine, absinthe and Peychaud’s Bitters. Still, you can’t go wrong with a light Pilsner — or whatever happens to be in the cooler.
“Everything about okra is slime this and slime that until we get to gumbo. As soon as the topic of gumbo comes up, there is a switch in terminology and suddenly we’re praising okra’s magical thickening effect,” writes Chris Smith in his 2019 book, The Whole Okra: A Seed to Stem Celebration
“Multiple early references to gumbo as both a thickened soup and a plant (okra) make me think that gumbo is more clearly linked to okra than [filé],” Smith writes. “Perhaps [filé] was first used as a winter alternative or developed as an individual stew that later melded with the okra preparation and assumed the same Thename.”plot — and gumbo — thickens.
P IS FOR POTATO SALAD
In the centuries-long disagreement over what thickens gumbo more effectively, the green, finger-like vegetable is historically critical to the dish. Okra draws a direct line between gumbo and its West African roots (the words "okra" and "gumbo" even share an etymological origin) with records of okra soup being prepared and eaten by enslaved Africans in New Orleans appearing from as far back as the mid-1700s — years before the arrival of Acadians to Louisiana.
Turkey neck gumbo has a specifically loyal following. The supple, rich flavor benefits specifically from the low-and-slow, all-day simmer of the gumbo pot.
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As a thickener and a vegetable, Okra’s gumbo role shines, If only some people Could get over the slime.
It’s impossible to talk about the evolution of gumbo from regional dish to national sensation without mentioning the late, great Cajun chef and Louisiana icon Paul Prudhomme, who is a foundational example of how a cook can go from celebrated to fullblown celebrity — and bring a dish rocketing to fame right alongside. The mastermind behind longtime French Quarter restaurant K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen, author of dozens of books, creator of an expansive seasoning line, and star of five PBS programs spanning two decades, Prudhomme introduced Louisiana cuisine to the masses, with gumbo leaving the strongest impression out of all the classic Cajun dishes. And while the gumbo made by a family in Wichita based on one of Prudhomme’s old recipes might be a little tamer than many along the Gulf Coast, the dish brings the same spirit of delicious inclusivity wherever it goes.
M IS FOR MAGNALITE Magnalite is old-fashioned, To put it quite bluntly, But it’s still the favorite cookware In all of Cajun country. There are certain types of cookware that inspire an almost religious devotion among home cooks: cast iron, copper and ceramic, to name a few. But the most loyal fans have pledged their allegiance to the shiny sturdiness of Magnalite pots and pans — particularly for gumbo-making in South Louisiana. Made of a unique, durable aluminum and magnesium alloy, these gleaming silver kitchen tools have a denser base and thinner sides than most of their cookware counterparts, allowing the pots to heat more evenly and distribute heat faster during the cooking process. Magnalite cookware can go from stovetop to oven — and refrigerator to stovetop — without missing a beat, with an ability to sear meat to perfection while helping ingredients and flavors naturally mingle. Perhaps the most iconic of all the Magnalite pieces is the ovalshaped roaster, a pot that resembles a very stout rocket ship or chunky UFO. If you see your grand-mère pull this famed vessel out of the cabinet, the odds are high that gumbo is what's for dinner.
O IS FOR OKRA
“Potato salad with your gumbo?” “Why, yes, please!” Those in the know Are happy to appease. Potato salad in gumbo — as a substitute for rice, served on the side or thrown in the mix alongside — is a Gulf Coast tradition for many that’s a prime example of don’t knock it until you try it. The creaminess of potato salad pairs almost seamlessly with the gumbo’s velvety depths, offering up a swirling bite of rich goodness with each spoonful. Of course, it’s not for everyone. A 2021 poll from The Times-Picayune revealed that 50% of readers surveyed prefer rice in their gumbo; 12% like potato salad only; 37% said they enjoy both rice and potato salad in (or with) their gumbo; and a contrarian 1% said they wanted neither rice nor potato salad.
R IS FOR RECIPE CARDS Does your grand-mère remember Off the top of her head, Or have her recipe written On notecards instead? Like all good heirlooms, gumbo recipes are passed down from generation to generation; many times, in the handwriting of the recipe’s original creator from several generations back. Old-fashioned recipe cards, ingredient lists scribbled inside of a church cookbook, or instructions jotted down on a piece of yellowing notebook paper are among the most precious culinary keepsakes in the kitchen, not only because they help to preserve delicious dishes, but because they offer a constant connection to the past. And while your mamaw might’ve been able to pull off the dish from memory, replicating how she makes gumbo so perfectly will probably require a little bit more of a (handwritten) reminder. S IS FOR SHRIMP Seafood gumbo without shrimp? Why, that’d never happen! You’d even catch them yourself While playing sea captain. Of all the oceanic critters that find themselves tossed into a pot of gumbo, shrimp is far and away the most iconic. Serious shrimp lovers know that one of the best ways to ramp up the flavor of a seafood gumbo is homemade shrimp stock — and maybe a few dried shrimp in the mix. For many devotees, there’s no such thing as excess: more shrimp is shrimply delectable. T IS FOR TOMATO Suggest tomato in gumbo And be prepared to be booed, For many die-hard fans The very thought is just crude. Outside of scraps about okra versus filé for thickening, few gumbo feuds run as hot as the argument over whether or not tomatoes belong in the dish. Some believe the divide over tomatoes stems from whether you learned to cook gumbo Creole-style — and are therefore pro-tomato — or in a Cajun fashion, where the addition of tomato would be roughly akin to throwing a dirty sock into the pot. Further supporting this line of thinking is that Creole gumbo tends to be more seafood forward, meaning tomatoes play nicely with it, while Cajun gumbo has a more terrestrial bench of ingredients. What about a duck and oyster gumbo, you say? I don’t know the right answer, but all I can advise is this: Add tomato at your own risk.
Q IS FOR QUICK COOKING
V IS FOR VEGETABLES Bell pepper, onion and celery Complete the trinity, Straight from the garden Is best — don’t you agree? No matter how you gumbo, you’re definitely not making it without the holy trinity of bell pepper, onion and celery…right? Right. Whew, thank goodness.
People know gumbo Is an all-day affair; Those who take shortcuts Can’t even compare. We all know that gumbo is a time-consuming dish, and the sort of all-day (or multi-day) activity that folks tend to structure entire weekends around. “There’s no rushing it!” old-timers will tell you. There are, however — ahem — shortcuts that can be taken, like buying a jar of pre-made roux or gumbo base if you’re really in a pinch; using frozen vegetables instead of chopping them up fresh; and even shredding a store-bought rotisserie chicken instead of searing off the meat yourself. Is this considered blasphemous to many? Absolutely. Do people still do it all the time? Of course. The true test is whether you can taste the difference.
U IS FOR UTENSILS A sturdy wooden roux spoon Stirs the pot with ease, Certain utensils Help make gumbo a breeze. Sure, there are people who stir with any spoon that’s clean and cut with whichever knife is handy. But for others, utensils are as much a part of the process of making gumbo as the ingredients themselves. For many cooks, that might mean an heirloom ladle passed down through generations, and for others it might be a roux spoon: The tool specifically crafted with straight, slanted edges to keep the roux moving and achieve a darn-near-perfect consistency. But even with such a singlepurpose utensil, the basic rule of roux can’t be forsaken: Don’t stop stirring!
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X IS FOR X-TRA RICE How you layer your gumbo Can be quite revealing, For many, extra rice Seems quite appealing. Glance into the depths of several gumbo bowls in a row, and you’ll see a completely different ideation of what constitutes the perfect rice-to-gumbo (or gumbo-to-potatosalad) ratio for each person. Some starchy enthusiasts heap on extra rice — practically turning the gumbo itself into a topping — while others put such a measly scoop of rice in the bowl it’s hardly worth bothering. Structuring a bowl of gumbo is an art form; years of trialand-error work will reveal the perfect-for-you balance.
GUMBO RADIO ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT “The Swamp Pop & French Music Show” host Bobby Richard grew up in the swamp town of Pierre Part (Swamp People star Troy Landry lives there). Tune in to the “Swamp Pop Show” Saturday mornings and the “French Music Show” Sunday mornings, or stream online at www.gumbo949.com.
Z IS FOR GUMBO Z’HERBES A Maundy Thursday specialty Of Chef Leah Chase, She cooked with a magic That can’t be replaced. Gumbo z’herbes is a Lenten season gumbo that stands out from the crowd, with its nine (or other odd number) types of greens, occasionally vegetarian construct, and ties to none other than the queen of Creole cuisine herself, Leah Chase, who served the dish annually for throngs of guests at Dooky Chase until her death in 2019. While the religious lore goes that the nine different greens in gumbo z’herbes represent the nine different churches visited by Jesus on Good Friday, Ms. Chase had a different spin on the meaning. “You will acquire a new friend for every kind of green in the pot — and we hope one of them is rich!”
MISSISSIPPI GUMBO ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Chef Nick Wallace introduced the world to Mississippi Gumbo as a contestant on Bravo’s cooking competition show, Top Chef (he has also participated in several other Food Network programs). Wallace’s culinary skills earned him the title of Best Chef of Mississippi 2020. Visit the Nissan Cafe at the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson, Mississippi, to try a bowl of Mississippi Gumbo for yourself.
Y IS FOR YESTERDAY’S GUMBO
Like wine and women Gumbo gets better with age, The leftovers might even Take center stage! It’s no secret that gumbo belongs to an elite class of food — like Chinese takeout and lasagna — that tastes better the second (or third) day. The extra time a gumbo’s flavors spend commingling while refrigerated together overnight allows all the bits to congeal into a thicker, fuller whole. So, no, it’s not just your imagination: Yesterday’s gumbo actually does taste better.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Paul Schexnayder’s new children’s book, The Gumbo Gators, from Pelican Publishing, features Fran and Van Harahan, two gators who tour the state of Louisiana picking up ingredients for making a gumbo. Look for it wherever books are sold this fall.
Gumbo GatorsThe FICTION Cooking & Food 7 14 55 6 27 0 11 $19.99 Written and Illustrated by Paul Schexnayder GatorsGumboTheSchexnayder
W IS FOR WEATHER Is there “gumbo weather” Or can you eat it year ’round? Some say it's off limits Until the heat cools down. Superstitions are thick in the air throughout South Louisiana…particularly when it comes to food. As far as gumbo is concerned, some people believe that a specific season exists when it’s appropriate weather for gumbo eating, beginning with that first nip of winter when the humidity goes from brow-mopping hot to a light glisten on one’s temples. Any other point in the year that’s not “gumbo weather” time? The dish is mostly off limits. (See letter Z for an exception.) Sure, there are some pragmatic reasons a robust bowl of andouille and chicken gumbo might not be the most popular choice for a July picnic, but when it comes to stirring up bad luck, I tend to think year-round gumbo-eaters are in the clear. It’s just too delicious to be confined to a season.
JUVENILE
Author and illustrator Paul Schexnayder captures a local’s perspective of his home state with his playful, folk-artstyle illustrations. The book is complete with a Cajun-French glossary. A native of New Iberia, Louisiana, author and artist Paul Schexnayder is the recipient of numerous honors for both his civic involvement and his artwork. He was named Citizen of the Year by the New Iberia Daily Iberian and he received the award for Best Animation Film at the Iberia Film Festival two years in a row. He is frequently featured as a festival poster artist, and his work has been placed in galleries and shows throughout Louisiana. His work can be found in the collections of former Louisiana governors as well as in the homes of esteemed collectors throughout the country. The author/ illustrator of three previous children’s books, he has worked as a visual arts teacher in area schools since 1989. PrintedinKorea “Whimsical artist Paul Schexnayder takes us on a delightful road trip through Louisiana with two festive gators. can’t think of a better way to teach Louisiana geography, not to mention our unique culture.”—Cheré Dastugue Coen, author of ExploringCajunCountry:ATourofHistoricAcadiana “A wonderful read-aloud storybook that will delight young readers and their entire family. Paul Schexnayder has a great talent for combining fun language and enchanting, colorful Books—Lorraineillustrations.”Kingston,AlongtheTeche
Meet Fran and Van Harahan! This spicy alligator couple travel the state of Louisiana, makin’ groceries for a gumbo. In their boat, they pick up rice in Crowley, sausage in Lafayette, and wild game in Shreveport and Monroe. As Fran and Van explore from the Red River to Bayou Teche and down along the old Mississippi, delighting in the delicious ingredients they find along the way, they introduce young readers to the waterways and byways of the Bayou State. Follow along as these Gumbo Gators make a gumbo fit for the whole state of Louisiana!
GTheumbo Gators Written and Illustrated by Paul Schexnayder
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The irresistible little snack that always delights!
It’s the little things that make food taste special. We believe in doing things right, and we just happen to love it. Go for the handful!
They are a snack-time favorite everyone can enjoy and the perfect companion to add a little cheesy, crunchy excitement to your meals. Add Goldfish Cheddar crackers to soups, sprinkle them on salads, or simply serve as a side to your lunchtime sandwich.
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WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 1 pound collard or mustard greens 1 pound spinach 1 pound turnip greens 1 pound green cabbage leaves 1 large bunch fresh watercress (optional) 1 large bunch fresh parsley (optional) The tops of 6 carrots (optional) The tops of a large bunch of radishes (optional) ½ teaspoon cayenne ½ teaspoon black pepper 2 bay leaves ½ teaspoon ground thyme ¼ teaspoon allspice (optional) 1 pound salt meat or ham, cut into small cubes 3 tablespoons vegetable shortening 1 bunch green onions, finely chopped 1 cup chopped yellow onions 1 garlic clove, minced HOW TO PREP: If using fresh greens, trim and wash well. Put the greens in a large, deep pot and add enough water to cover. Add the cayenne, black pepper, bay leaves, thyme and allspice. Boil until the greens are tender. Drain and reserve the cooking liquid (you should have about 3 to 4 quarts of liquid).
LEAH CHASE’S GUMBO Z’HERBES (PRONOUNCED GUMBO ZAB) Makes 8-10 servings WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 1 bunch mustard greens 1 bunch collard greens 1 bunch turnip greens 1 bunch watercress 1 bunch beet tops 1 bunch carrot tops 1 bunch spinach ½ head lettuce ½ head cabbage 2 onions, chopped (about 3 cups) 4 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped 5 tablespoons flour 1 pound smoked sausage 1 pound smoked ham 1 pound brisket, cubed 1 pound stew meat 1 pound chaurice (hot sausage) 1 teaspoon thyme leaves 1 teaspoon cayenne 1 teaspoon filé powder
Steamed rice for serving HOW TO PREP: Clean all greens under cold running water, making sure to pick out and discard bad leaves and rinse away any grit. Chop greens coarsely and place them in a 12-quart stockpot with the onions and garlic. Cover with about 1½ gallons water. Bring mixture to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook 30 minutes. Strain greens. Reserve greens and liquid. Cut all meats except chaurice into 1-inch bite-size pieces, and put in 12-quart stockpot with 2 cups of the reserved liquid. Steam over high heat for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, cut chaurice into bite-size pieces and place in a skillet over high heat to render, about 10 minutes. Remove chaurice, keeping grease in the skillet. Set aside. Blend greens in a food processor until Heatpuréed.skillet of reserved chaurice drippings over high heat and add flour to the skillet. Cook until flour is fully cooked and a roux is formed (about 5 minutes; does not have to brown). Pour roux over meat mixture in stockpot and stir to combine. Add puréed greens and 2 quarts reserved liquid. Simmer over low heat 20 minutes. Add chaurice, thyme and cayenne to the stockpot. Stir well. Season and simmer 40 minutes. Stir in filé powder and remove from heat. Serve over steamed rice.
By Marcelle Bienvenu T here are so many types of gumbo on the Gulf Coast. You can find them made with everything from chicken and turkey to seafood and sausage — and sometimes even rabbit or squirrel! But there is one gumbo that is truly the king of them all, and that’s gumbo aux herbes or gumbo z’herbes
MARCELLE’S GUMBO Z’HERBES (WITHOUT A ROUX) Makes about 10 servings In addition to the controversy regarding the inclusion of meat in gumbo z’herbes is the debate about whether or not it should be made with a roux. (My mother sometimes added a cup of premade roux to her gumbo z’herbes. It’s a personal thing.) Also, if you can find fresh greens, I highly recommend using them, but if not, frozen will suffice.
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Simply Z’Best
This unique gumbo is believed to have originated with Creoles, particularly on Good Friday when, it was believed, you would have good luck for the coming year if you ate seven greens and met seven people during the day. Some folklore says that, for every green put into the gumbo, a new friend would be made during the coming year. Since it was typically eaten on Good Friday, no meat was added, although oysters were often added to the pot. But in Acadiana, it was not the tradi tional Good Friday meal, since the gumbo z’herbes was usually prepared with salt meat or ham, and devout Catholics don’t eat meat on Good Friday. In our family, it was typically a hearty gumbo, often prepared by my Aunt Grace when the hordes of aunts, uncles and cousins flocked to her house on weekends.Aswithall the other types of gumbo, there are many versions of this green gumbo. Some recipes call for cabbage, radish tops, turnips, mustard, spinach, watercress, parsley and green onions (a total of eight greens). But other recipes for gumbo z’herbes claim you will have good luck for the coming year if you eat seven greens and meet seven people during the course of the day. Those recipes often include collard or mustard greens, spinach, beet or turnip greens, chicory, cabbage, watercress, parsley, along with the green tops of carrots and radishes. The late, great, beloved Leah Chase made her gumbo z’herbes on Holy Thursday. She always used nine greens, which I understand was to represent the nine churches visited on Good Friday in remembrance of Jesus’ walk to be crucified. And since it was served on Holy Thursday, hers also included several kinds of meats.
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Sunday Supper By Poppy Tooker L eah Chase believed the problems of the world could all be solved over a bowl of gumbo. After all, in the 1960s she had observed her theory in action, as Black New Orleans civil rights leaders and White politicians sat down together over countless bowls of gumbo in Dooky Chase’s upper room to craft an end to segregation. Much was made of her admonishment of Barack Obama when he picked up a bottle of hot sauce as a bowl of her gumbo was placed before him. “Mr. President, you do not put hot sauce in my gumbo!” she’s often quoted as saying, when her warning actually included the final words, “…before you taste it!”
Gumbo featured largely in Leah’s life long before her days at Dooky Chase’s Restaurant. Growing up in Madisonville, Louisiana as the eldest of 11 children, Leah recalled that there was always gumbo at Sunday dinner. “When I was coming up, we were so poor,” she recollected. “My daddy and his brothers farmed 15 acres. During strawberry season, Mother would wake us at 4am. The farm was about five miles from home, so we’d walk there and back to pick berries before school. But we didn’t complain. It was a happy life. If there was a quail eating berries in the straw berry patch, Daddy would shoot him, and we’d have quail for breakfast glazed with plum jelly Mother made from a tree in the yard.”Leah’s childhood gumbo was filled with whatever was seasonal and available. “If Mother went down to the river or bayou and caught crabs, you had that in your gumbo. If it was squirrel or rabbit that Daddy had shot, that was the base.” Nothing went to waste. “We didn’t have freezers, so in those days to preserve okra in the summer, Daddy made us slice it and lay it out in the sun to dry on flour sacks that Mother had bleached white.” When the long strings of dried okra were gone, filé became the thickener for the gumbo.Sundays were special when Leah was growing up. While meat was often scarce during the week, there was always chicken on Sundays, stewed, or fried and served with macaroni and cheese — but first, there was gumbo. “Mother took great pains in making that gumbo on Sunday. Never a little pot — it was always a big pot.” Leah remembered with pride how her mother used bleached flour sacks she sewed into tablecloths to set the table especially for Sunday dinner: “We sat at the table for gumbo first. Everyone had a glass of wine, sometimes two.” she laughed. “Afterwards we’d get up and walk around before Mother served the rest of dinner. It was a simple life, but we were happy,” she remembered with a smile.Once Leah joined her mother-in-law Emily at Dooky Chase’s Restaurant in the 1950s, her gumbo began to take on new promi nence. The gumbo served at the restaurant today is still true to what was served then. It’s Creole style, redolent with meat and seafood, full of flavor and tradition. For more than seven decades Leah served that gumbo to presidents, movie stars, musicians and anyone else lucky enough to pass through the doors.
Holy Thursday By Poppy Tooker T here is one day every year when a different type of gumbo reigns supreme at Dooky Chase’s Restaurant — that is the gumbo z’herbes. The traditional Holy Thursday meal of meaty green gumbo has been a ritual of New Orleanians for generations, and a tradition of Leah Chase’s for decades. With roots in the Catholic Creole community, gumbo z’herbes was intended as the last meal before the Easter vigil fasting began. Gumbo z’herbes comes with much ritual and superstition. A minimum of seven different greens must go into the gumbo, but that number must always be odd — increasing to nine or 11. An even number would bring bad luck. The good news? “You’ll make a new friend for every green you put in your Holy Thursday gumbo z’herbes, and you have to hope one of them will be rich,” Leah would laugh.Collards, mustard, kale, cabbage, turnip greens, spinach and Swiss chard usually made an appearance in Leah’s gumbo z’herbes. For many years her secret ingre dient was pepper grass, a weed gathered from New Orleans’ levees and neutral grounds, that often made an appearance at her kitchen door just in time to be included in the pot. In recent years, Leah replaced that obscure ingredient with watercress and
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The taste of Leah’s gumbo was complex, something she often referred to as Creole. “Creole gumbo is more like a soup, where you get what you get,” Leah said. “You might get a piece of chicken. You might get a shrimp. You might get a sausage or a little piece of veal stew meat. That veal picks up the flavor from all the other ingredients.”
LEAH CHASE PHOTOS BY CHERYL GRUBER
Once the greens are well drained, chop them up finely, either by hand or with a food processor. If you are using frozen greens, cook according to package directions with spices, then drain and reserve the cooking Meltliquid.the shortening in a large skillet and brown the salt meat or ham, yellow onions and garlic. Add the chopped green onions to the skillet. Return the greens to the reserved liquid and add the cooked salt meat, onions and garlic. Simmer for about 2 hours. Some people add a couple of teaspoons of white vinegar during this cooking time. Correct the seasonings to taste. When it is prepared in this manner, you can choose to eat the gumbo with or without rice. If it is to be a Lenten dish, substitute 2 pints of oysters and their liquor for the salt meat or ham.
arugula, giving it a taste she described as “lemony.”Once those greens simmered together, the grinding began. “It takes some doing because I don’t like it chopped. I grind it so it’s smooth.” Smoked sausage, ham, fresh chaurice sausage and stew meat were all added to the gumbo. “Creoles like to see the meat in their gumbo z’herbes,” Leah advised. Filé powder provides thickening at the end of the cooking and, at Dooky Chase, fried chicken always accompanies the annual feast, along with bread pudding for dessert. Unlike red beans & rice (which Leah bemoaned was supposed to be just for Mondays but in recent times was expected on her menu every day), gumbo z’herbes remains reserved for Holy Thursday alone at the restaurant. In her later years, over 1,500 people came to Dooky Chase on Holy Thursday for Leah’s gumbo z’herbes; it was a day she loved and a tradition that her family continues today. “When you see people enjoying their food and they’re so happy — it makes you happy,” Leah said. At Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, Leah’s gumbo still makes people happy every day. The oft-proclaimed “Queen of Creole Cuisine” passed away in 2019, but Leah’s legacy lives on in every bowl of gumbo served.
HAMBONE GUMBO ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Chef Luke Hidalgo combines the best of Creole, Cajun and country in his Hambone gumbo, named for his Old Mandeville restaurant and acclaimed as one of Louisiana’s best. Hidalgo starts with a dark brown roux, adds fresh Louisiana Gulf shrimp, and seasons with ham hocks and collard greens. The gumbo is served Cajun-style with a scoop of pickled okra potato salad.
PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO
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DEATH BY GUMBO ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Chefs John Folse and Rick Tramonto created Death by Gumbo for their Restaurant R’evolution in the New Orleans French Quarter. It is served with oysters, andouille and a nearly boneless whole quail stuffed with rice flavored with parsley and filé powder in the middle of the bowl.
– Jeremy Simmons , Store Director, New Orleans
WE DAT’S
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Gregoire Tillery, founder of We Dat’s “New Orleans’ Owned” Chicken & Shrimp, started his own food truck after catching an episode of The Great Food Truck Race. The entrepreneurial spirit quickly took hold. Today, he has five always packed We Dat locations. He also has an ever-expanding line of We Dat’s products, including seasonings, sauces and mixes, such as Creole red beans & rice and gumbo, with more items currently in production.
TOP WITH FRIED SAUSAGE
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ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Try topping red bean gumbo with crispy, fried sausage. I like Patton’s. Fry it in a skillet — if you put the patty on a grill, it would be like the California wildfires; a total fiery disaster, because there’s so much fat in it. Drain the patty on a paper towel, then slice or crumble it and serve it on top, like a garnish. I have to make everything at home mild because otherwise the kids won’t touch it, so the Patton’s is just for me.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The Rouse Family Recipe for our fried chicken goes back more than 60 years. Our cooks start with fresh, never frozen chicken. Every piece is double battered and fried in our special 0% trans-fat seasoned oil. You get juicy meat, a crisp crunch and just the right amount of Louisiana spice.
PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO
By David W. Brown
BLUE RUNNER ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Blue Runner Foods, renowned for its canned Creole Cream Style Red Beans, dates back to 1918, when the Union Canning Company began canning fresh fruits and a variety of other items. In 1946 the company moved to its current location in Gonzales, Louisiana, where all of its products are still produced today. OUR FAMOUS FRIED CHICKEN IS DOUBLE BATTERED SO YOU GET THAT SPICY CRUNCH IN EVERY BITE.
Farmers and local economic circum stances likely yielded the unusual gumbo.
Blue Runner Beans (then the Union Canning Company, because of their location in Union, Louisiana, along the Mississippi River in St. James), opened in 1918, first canning figs and blackberries in the backyard of local farmer, cook and entrepreneur Pierre Chauvin. He would eventually begin canning a family recipe he learned from his grandmother — a cuisine, indeed, that would define the company and the St. James community: Creole Cream Style Red Beans.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Lucius Hamilton Hayward founded L.H. Hayward and Company in 1923 to sell red beans in the French Market in New Orleans. When the company moved into an old cotton plant, it was named Camellia after the favorite flower of the wife of L.H. Hayward Jr. Around 1940, when supermarkets were becoming popular, William Gordon Hayward, son of L.H. Jr., came up with the revolutionary idea to package beans in individual bags for consumers. While the Haywards have expanded to offer beans, peas and lentils to the world — including a Red Bean Gumbo Mix — Camellia remains a local, family company today. SEASONED HAM ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT If you don’t have a ham bone left over from Sunday supper, try using a Chisesi Ham Shank or bite-size Seasoned Ham to add flavor to red bean gumbo. For many Louisianians, Chisesi is ham. Philip Chisesi, like so many Italian entrepreneurs in the area, got his start at the French Market. More than 100 years later, the company he founded is still familyowned and operated by 4th- and 5th-generation Chisesis.
Tuesday’sMonday’sRedBeans,Gumbo
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“I certainly had my share of white and red beans and rice when I was growing up, but the beans usually came with smothered or fried pork chops,” says chef and influential cookbook author Marcelle Bienvenu. She grew up in St. Martinville, Louisiana, which wasn’t quite so eccentric in its use of beans as other parts of the state. Working and living at Oak Alley Plantation in St. James Parish, she encountered dishes that deviated from the norms of her home parish of St. Martin, including a signature cuisine of the area: red bean gumbo. “I was asked to do a cooking presen tation at one of the schools in Ascension Parish, and one of the teachers asked me if I had ever experienced red bean gumbo,” she says.
According to Chef Jean-Paul “J.P.” Daigle, a chef instructor at the John Folse Culinary Institute at Nicholls State University, red bean gumbo is one of those recipes that “you go down a certain ghost road in Louisiana somewhere, and they only prepare it in like a six-mile square area, but you don’t see it everywhere else.”
Now, I’m not taking credit for this culinary sensation, but according to my mother, my
RED BEAN GUMBO MIX
“Lundi Gras is the queen of all Mondays, and I think this is the queen of all red bean dishes.”
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“Many subsistence farmers along the river raised a variety of beans, thus the creation of Blue Runner Foods,” says Bienvenu. As a result of the proximity of the major factory, most meals in the area incorporated beans of some kind. Red beans and rice has long been a New Orleans staple meal on Mondays — the dish you make on laundry day, because you can throw the ingredients (including that leftover ham bone from Sunday’s dinner) into an unattended pot and let low heat do all the work until dinner time. Parishes all along the Mississippi River maintained the same tradition.Redbean gumbo followed from this, according to Chef Daigle. “What would happen is, after families finished their Monday dinner of red beans, there would still oftentimes be a lot left over from that big batch they cooked.” In the early 1900s, when an ice box was literally an insulated box with a big brick of ice in it, refrigera tion wasn’t exactly a long-term solution for food storage. “You might have a quart of red beans leftover after you’ve finished,” says Daigle, “Maybe not enough that would feed the whole family the next day, but enough left that you could do something with, and it was important that you did something before it spoiled.”Thesolution, says Bienvenu? The red beans left over from Monday were used to make red bean gumbo on Tuesday. Proper preparation began with a roux that wasn’t too, too dark, she explains, “to which the trinity, bay leaves, garlic and mashed-up red beans were added.” Home cooks added enough liquid — usually water — to turn the thick, flavorful food into a soupy concoction that was simmered for an hour or more. According to Daigle, the most inter esting thing — the pièce de résistance to stretch the dish even further — came next. Although the meal was already proteinheavy, it was feeding farmers of all ages in an agrarian community who needed their bulging farmhand muscles ready for work the next day. They needed yet more protein. “Everybody had chickens,” he says, “so what they would do is turn the red bean gumbo down to a nice low simmer and break a dozen eggs carefully into the gumbo, but not stir it. They let the eggs cook until they were all the way boiled.” They did this 15 to 20 minutes before serving. Essentially, cooks were poaching the eggs in gumbo all the way through until dinnertime.”
According to Bienvenu, “The family lined up to serve themselves a ladle of red bean gumbo and one egg.” (She emphasized that it was one egg per person.) “Sure, rice could also be offered, but more than likely, the egg was mashed up in the gumbo to make it very, veryBienvenucreamy.”encourages
readers to give the local St. James dish a try. “You may want to experiment with red bean gumbo,” she says, recommending using Blue Runner Red Beans (again, you’re welcome), and confessing, “I have to admit that I often go straight to the canned beans when making my red beans andForrice.”Chef Daigle’s part, he has made red bean gumbo a Carnival season tradition.
2 16-ounce cans Blue Runner Creole Cream Style Red Beans 1 dozen eggs ½ cup sliced green onion tops Steamed rice or potato salad, to serve HOW TO PREP: In a large cast-iron pot, make a dark brown roux with the oil and flour. Add onion, bell pepper, celery and garlic, and season with salt and pepper, stirring to coat. Add the sausage and cook, stirring constantly, until sausage is browned, about 5 minutes. Add the water or chicken stock, one ladleful at a time, stirring to combine. Mix in the red beans. Bring mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, for at least 1 hour. Crack eggs, one at a time, and put in gumbo, gentling placing them around the pot, not on top of each other. Cook for an additional 15 to 20 minutes to poach the eggs. Serve over steamed rice or potato salad and garnish with green onions.
½ cup vegetable oil ½ cup all-purpose flour 1 small yellow onion, diced 1 small green bell pepper, diced 2 ribs celery, diced 1 head of garlic (about 6 cloves), minced Salt and pepper, to taste 1 pound smoked sausage, sliced into 1-inch rounds 1 quart water or chicken stock
Once ladled into bowls, it would likely have been topped with chopped green onions. The eggs were more than a protein boost, however: They influenced the flavor profile of the dish. Moreover, they likely took the place of rice in the gumbo.
RED BEAN GUMBO Makes 8-10 servings WHAT YOU WILL NEED:
own dear grandmother, Ursula “Bootsie” Letulle (née Chauvin), worked at Blue Runner Foods around that time. As it turns out, Pierre Chauvin is my great-great-uncle. On behalf of all Chauvin descendants: Louisiana, you’re welcome. As a result of Blue Runner, gumbo as St. James Parish knew it (as well as nearby Gonzales) would never be the same again.
I always remember Paul sitting at a table near the kitchen, tasting each and every item on the menu before it went out to his guests. And I know how lucky am I to have worked with him and the Brennans.
GUMBO EMPANADAS
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n 1971, Time Life Books released American Cooking: Creole and Acadian as part of its “Foods of the World” series. By some lucky stroke of fate, I landed the position of local consultant for the publication. I soon realized that few people (me included) knew of the existence of something called “Cajun cuisine.” Up until then, most people thought of the local fare as “what your mama fixed you.” It was rice and gravy, crawfish étouffée or bisque, smothered okra, smothered pork chops and a bounty of other star ingre dients “smothered” with onions, bell peppers and celery. (No one at that time called this trio theA“Trinity.”)fewyears later, I found myself working at Commander’s Palace in the catering depart ment. Ella Brennan, of the Brennan family that owned Commander’s, and I became fast friends while the Time Life cookbook staff and I were investigating the Creole cuisine of New Orleans.In1974, when Paul Prudhomme appeared on the culinary scene in New Orleans preaching the gospel of Acadian (Cajun) cuisine, he quickly caught Ella’s attention. She was fascinated by the creativity of Paul Prudhomme and dubbed him what she called “a foodie.”
I loved his philosophy of using the freshest of the fresh ingredients from local growers, and he easily convinced the Brennan family (and his increasing number of fans) that a potato or any vegetable — okra, tomatoes, corn — grown and picked locally was far more flavorful than those exotic ones that were trucked in from who knew where. He knew this firsthand, because he and his family cooked and ate whatever their home gardens supplied. This practice began an epoch in the ever-evolving cuisine of South Louisiana. When Paul wanted to put quail on the menu, he sought out a farmer in South Mississippi — close to home — to provide the birds for Commander’s.
Tastes Like ’homme By Marcelle Bienvenu I
When Paul left Commander’s to open his restaurant K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen, there was no doubt in my mind that his casual establishment was going to be a smash hit. The first time I dined at K-Paul’s, I was in awe of his fried mirliton pirogues, filled with fried shrimp and fried oysters and dressed with a béarnaise sauce flavored with bits of tasso. Wow! He was a magician at combining flavors that tickled your taste buds.
Paul was named executive chef, the first American-born executive chef at the city’s presti gious Creole restaurant, Commander’s Palace.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Empanola in New Orleans offers a variety of South American-inspired empanadas, such as Beef Argentina and Chicken Peruvian, as well as New Orleansinspired empanadas, including Gumbo, which is made with roasted chicken, sausage, onions, peppers and celery.
ELIZA’S GUMBO YA YA ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Eliza Restaurant & Bar in Baton Rouge serves a classic Gumbo Ya Ya, made with chicken and andouille and cooked in a dark roux. It was one of three Louisiana restaurants named a USA TODAY Readers’ Choice Travel Award for the Best Gumbo. Antoine’s and Mr. B’s Bistro in New Orleans also made the list.
PHOTO BY FRANK AYMAMI
I was anxious to meet a Cajun chef who was born and raised in Opelousas, not far from my hometown of St. Martinville. We hit it off; I was quite charmed by this country chef. The story about him having little bags of his special seasoning blends is true. In the midst of cooking, he would pull out a big pinch of his seasoning mix to deftly sprinkle into the pot.
I consider myself lucky to have enjoyed his blackened fish and pork chops. He reinvented turducken and brought tasso (once made with trimmings from a boucherie) to great heights by making his own tasso from a better cut of pork — the shoulder.
When Ella and her family announced that they were going to hire Paul, I was stunned. I couldn’t imagine a restaurant of Commander’s Palace’s caliber having a “Cajun” chef. At the time, you would have been hard-pressed to find a restaurant in the Crescent City offering chicken and andouille gumbo. (Heck, few people other than those living in Acadiana had ever even heard of andouille.) I explained to Ella that the chicken in the gumbo was cooked “with bones and skin,” and that I didn’t think the sophisticated diners at Commander’s would like to have to handle whole thighs and breasts in their bowl of gumbo. “No problem, Marcelle. We’ll take the chicken off the bone before it’s served,” said Ella, who always knew how to solve any problem for her dining guests.
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A YA-HA! MOMENT ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Mr. B’s Bistro on Royal Street in the French Quarter opened as an offshoot of Commander’s Palace in 1979. Chef Paul Prudhomme, who brought Cajun food (including the first dark roux gumbo) to Commander’s Palace under Ella Brennan, helped open it. “He had his finger in every pot at Mr. B’s,” said Ella Brennan in an interview after Prudhomme died. Marcelle Bienvenu, and just about everyone on the internet, credits Prudhomme and Brennan with creating and naming Gumbo Ya-Ya. “When the Brennans decided to open Mr. B’s Bistro in the French Quarter (in 1979) across from the Monteleone Hotel, Ella wanted to have a unique gumbo served,” she says. “Ella and Chef Paul (and all of us) discussed this in detail — Paul wanted a deep-flavored gumbo and they wanted to call it gumbo ya-ya.”
Mr. B’s suggests that another chef was respon sible for creating their signature dish. “We were first introduced to this rich, dark-roux gumbo from one of our early chefs, Jimmy Smith, who grew up eating it in Cajun country,” the website states. “Its name is said to come from women who would cook the gumbo all day long while talking, or ‘ya-ya-ing.’”
PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO
SALTINES ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT F.L. Sommer and Company of St. Joseph, Missouri, is credited with making the first saltine cracker back in 1876. The perforations on top are called docking holes, which prevent the cracker from pillowing during the baking process. They are the perfect crackers for gumbo.
- Dr. Teresa Parker Farris, Folklorist MR. B’S GUMBO YA YA Courtesy Mr. B’s Bistro Makes 8-10 servings WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter 3 cups all-purpose flour 2 red bell peppers, diced 2 green bell peppers, diced 2 medium onions, diced 2 celery stalks, diced 1¼ gallons (20 cups) chicken stock 1 pound andouille sausage, cut into ¼-inch slices 2 tablespoons Creole seasoning 2 tablespoons kosher salt, plus more to taste 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 1 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes 1 teaspoon chili powder 1 teaspoon dried thyme 1 tablespoon minced garlic 2 bay 3½-poundleaveschicken, roasted and boned Hot sauce to taste Boiled rice to serve HOW TO PREP: In a 12-quart stockpot melt butter over low heat. Gradually add 1 cup flour, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, and cook, stirring constantly for 30 seconds. Add 1 more cup flour and stir constantly for 30 seconds. Add remaining cup flour and stir constantly for 30 seconds. Continue to cook roux, stirring constantly, until it is the color of dark mahogany, about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Add red and green bell peppers and stir constantly for 30 seconds. Add onions and celery and stir constantly for 30 seconds. Gradually add stock to roux, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon to prevent lumps. Add andouille, Creole seasoning, salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, chili powder, thyme, garlic and bay leaves, and bring to a boil. Simmer gumbo, uncovered, 45 minutes, skimming off any fat that accumulates and stirring Addoccasionally.chickenmeat and simmer 15 minutes. Adjust seasoning with salt and hot sauce. Serve over rice.
LOUISIANA FOLKLORE ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Long before appearing on the menus of New Orleans’ restaurants, the curious words “gumbo ya-ya” graced the cover of a now-classic Depression-era anthology of Louisiana folklore. The book drew from hundreds of interviews and newspaper accounts gathered by local researchers and compiled by three New Orleans writers — Lyle Saxon, Edward P. Dreyer and Robert Tallant — all in the employ of the Federal Writers’ Project, an initiative of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. Known as “Mr. New Orleans,” former Times-Picayune columnist and Vieux Carré preservationist Saxon headed the agency’s Louisiana branch while Dreyer, a Tulane graduate, worked as his assistant. Tallant, later an acclaimed author of nonfiction and children’s literature, served as editor. Together, they assembled colorful accounts of the state’s vernacular culture — superstitions and tall tales, rituals and celebrations, traditional foods and occupations — complemented by the drawings of Caroline Durieux, a Newcomb College alumna and director of the Federal Art Project’s local office. The authors noted that their title derived from a South Louisiana expression meaning “everybody talks at once”: when multiple voices, like the ingredients of a gumbo, blend into one. Within New Orleans’ French-Creole community, they added, gumbo ya-ya specifically referred to gatherings of older women, sharing gossip and advice. The collected stories of Cajun loup-garous (werewolves), African American Mardi Gras Indians, Sicilian St. Joseph’s Day altars and other local traditions were published in 1945. The book remains in print today, but “gumbo ya-ya” largely lives on in the kitchens of the Gulf South, a distinctive creation that, true to its name, garners choruses of culinary accolades.
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½ cup chopped fresh parsley
Chef Paul Prudhomme’s technique for making a roux was to get the oil almost smoking hot, then add the flour and in minutes, voilà! — a roux. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I still can’t bring myself to make a roux like this. Years ago, I worked with Eula Mae Dore, who was the cook for the McIlhennys at Avery Island, on her cookbook. She professed that all rouxs should have more flour than oil. “Cher, a little more flour always makes a slightly thick gumbo or stew, and that’s how I like it,” she explained. I admit I do a roux “her way” when I make a shrimp and egg gumbo.
1 rib celery, chopped 2 garlic cloves, peeled 8 cups water ¼ cup dried shrimp, soaked in ½ cup water for 1 hour
1 cup chopped yellow onions ¼ cup chopped green bell pepper ¼ cup chopped red bell pepper
Steamed rice HOW TO PREP: Heat the oil in a large, heavy pot over medium heat for 2 minutes, then add the flour. Stir constantly to make a dark brown roux, the color of chocolate, about 15 to 20 minutes. Add the onions and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the bell peppers, celery and garlic, and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add 2 cups of the water to the roux mixture and stir well to blend. Then add the remaining 6 cups of water and stir again to blend. Drain the soaked dried shrimp and add to the pot. Cover the pot and reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer for 1½ hours. Add the salt, black pepper and Tabasco, then skim off any oil that has risen to the surface. Drain the gumbo into a colander set over a large bowl. All the vegetables will remain in the colander. Pour off about 4 cups of the gumbo liquid and transfer it into a medium-size saucepan. Put one whole, raw, unpeeled egg into a cup and gently “pour” it into this saucepan of gumbo. Repeat this step with the remaining eggs, gentling placing them around the pot, not on top of each other. Poach for about 5 minutes; then, using a slotted spoon, carefully transfer them to the big pot. Pour the poaching gumbo liquid back into the larger pot of gumbo. Return the vegetables to the gumbo pot and add the fresh shrimp, green onions and parsley, and let simmer, covered, for 10 to 15 minutes. Serve in gumbo bowls or deep soup bowls with rice.
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Until I was a young adult, I believed that the only way to make a roux was my mama’s way: Equal parts of oil and flour were combined in a cast-iron pot over medium-low heat and stirred constantly until the mixture reached the desired color, which sometimes took over half an hour. When Mama was going to make a roux, she announced to the household that she was not to be disturbed as she went about her task. You could die at her feet, and she wouldn’t even blink an eye. Her method allowed her to enjoy a couple of whiskey sours or Manhattans while she had some peace and quiet.
1 pound medium-size fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined ½ cup chopped green onions
MARCELLE’S SHRIMP AND EGG GUMBO Makes 8 servings WHAT YOU WILL NEED: ½ cup vegetable oil ²⁄₃ cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon Tabasco brand Garlic Pepper Sauce
– Marcelle Bienvenu
1 teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon black pepper
8 large eggs
SHRIMP STOCK Makes 4 quarts Save your shrimp shells and heads for this stock.
DRIED SHRIMP ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Those containers of dried shrimp that you often find in our seafood department are dried and packaged by companies across South Louisiana, including many that are family owned. Our local manufacturers learned shrimp drying techniques from the Chinese shrimpers who came to Louisiana in the mid 1800s, and lived and worked in fishing communities like Grand Isle. These mid and turn-of-the-century manufacturers would boil the shrimp in salt water and lay them in the sun to dry. The trick was to constantly rake so the shrimp would dry evenly. While these companies initially sold sun-dried shrimp, most have now gone modern with central heaters. People eat dried shrimp as snacks, and also add them to recipes to enhance the shrimp flavor.
EULA MAE ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The late Eula Mae Dore, who cooked for the McIlhennys — makers of world-renowned Tabasco Hot Sauce — on Avery Island for many years, claimed that the practice of poaching eggs in stews and gumbos has been around for a long time. Eggs were plentiful in the country because just about everyone had chickens. And while the eggs were often poached in meatless stews, like potato stew, to provide a heartier meal, they were as likely to appear in meat and seafood gumbos made in Cajun country. Eula Mae, with her husband, managed the Commissary where Avery island residents could find everything from kerosene to detergent, canned goods, produce, basic groceries and a good sandwich.
GULF SHRIMP You can great fresh, head-on, wild-caught Gulf shrimp at any Rouses Markets. We keep them stacked fresh on ice in our Seafood Department. We also have our own line of frozen Louisiana shrimp, in various counts; they are de-headed and deveined and frozen straight off the boat to preserve their flavor. Let the unopened bag thaw overnight in the fridge, or submerge it in a bowl of cold water for about 45 minutes before using.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED: Shells and heads from 1 pound of Gulf shrimp 1 ounce dried shrimp (optional) 3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped 1 large sprig of thyme 1 bay leaf 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 1 teaspoon salt stockpot. Add 4 quarts of water and bring it to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes, skimming to remove any foam that rises to the surface. Strain stock, discarding solids, and set aside. Let cool and refrigerate up to 2 days or freeze in an airtight container for up to 2 months.
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Founded in 1980 by Bob Guilbeau on family land in Lafayette, Louisiana, Prejean’s Restau rant is a magnet for diners from across the country itching to try all sorts of traditional Cajun dishes while bands like Les Frères Michot provide an ultra-local soundtrack. At Jazz Fest, though, the calling card is a gumbo that can’t be found anywhere else: a one-of-a-kind sensory experience that brings together the earthiness of pheasant and quail, the tongue-tingling kick of andouille, and a velvety, chocolate-hued roux that delivers the big-hearted spirit of the bayou with each bite. Even in sauna-like conditions, the likelihood is high you’ll see dozens of people in Teva sandals and tropical-print shirts grooving fiercely while shoveling Prejean’s gumbo into their mouths. A multi-year winner at the World Champion ship Gumbo Cookoff in New Iberia, enjoyed by celebrities from Lady Gaga to Jimmy Buffett, Prejean’s pheasant, quail and andouille gumbo has played a major role in creating a dining ecosystem at Jazz Fest, where food doesn’t play second fiddle to music. Instead, memorable, only-at-the-fest eats and once-in-a-lifetime musical experiences have two-stepped their way — hand-in-hand — into New Orleans history.
- Sarah Baird
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PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO
Prejeans: Simply Cajun ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Whether you’re a first-timer or a seasoned pro, there are a few inalienable truths about going to Jazz Fest. First, you’re probably going to have a surprise encounter with Mother Nature, from a hot-pink sunburn that makes you look like a raccoon (thanks, Ray-Ban) to an afternoon thunderstorm that forces you to MacGyver a trash bag into a rain poncho. By the end of the weekend, your body is going to ache in the best possible way from the endless dancing, hustling between stages, and hoofing it to and from the Fair Grounds carrying festing gear packhorsestyle. And, at some point, you’re going to wait in line for your favorite, only-at-Jazz Fest foods — no matter how long the line, or how scorching the weather. For the uninitiated, it might seem beyond belief that a bowl of piping hot gumbo has been one of the most sought-after Jazz Fest foods for almost 30 years, but even the frequently inferno-like festing conditions can’t keep legions of loyal fans from starting their day off with Prejean’s pheasant, quail and andouille gumbo.
GP: Oh man, it was so simple. We started out with popcorn and nachos and beer. It was very humble beginnings.
Greg Parish: I’m a second-generation concessionaire: My father, Robert, Jr., founded the business back in 1985 and we’ve been at the fair since that time. Growing up at the fair…it was very unique. I literally grew up out there working, being on the grounds, and soaking up every thing along with all the different families that are part of the fair, as well. I would wander off and just get lost exploring and enjoying the people, the sights, the sounds, the smells — it’s an exciting experi ence. It also made for a good situation among my peers, because I was able to bring friends to the fair, and we could all wander around and have a good time.
Parish’s commitment to risk-taking and playfulness paid off last year when Gourmet Royale’s deep-fried seafood gumbo balls (yes, really) took home not one, but two, top prizes in the State Fair’s ultimate culinary showdown: the Big Tex Choice Awards. The Big Tex Choice Awards — or simply “the contest,” as Parish calls it — challenges State Fair concessionaires to put forth their most finger-licking, wild-hair fair food ideas in a head-to-head competi tion judged by a panel of celebrity Texans. The gumbo balls not only took home the trophy for Best Dish (Savory) last year, but also walked away with bragging rights for being named Most Creative. It was only the second time in the contest’s 17-year history for a single dish to win more than one award. But what exactly is a gumbo ball, and what makes them so remarkable? In our conversation below, Parish gives a heartfelt reflection not only on the roux-rich magic behind the gumbo ball itself, but why the dish’s success is so sentimental for his family and their State Fair of Texas legacy.
State Fare By Sarah Baird
Sarah Baird: How did you get started in the State Fair of Texas culinary world?
SB: And how did that grow into something as creative and unique as your prize-winning deepfried seafood gumbo balls?
GP: Pretty much up through the first part of the 1990s, we kept it really simple. But in 1996, my cousin went No. 1 in the [NFL]
draft, and we all went out to California for it. That’s where my father discovered chicken and waffles. When we got back, he was awarded an additional booth at the fair, and we started expanding the menu. Once we started adding items, we recognized the response from customers — people were very excited. When they started doing the Big Tex Choice Awards in 2005, we didn’t really get involved at first, but around 2010, we started to take interest in entering items into the contest. From there, I guess you could say it’s been trial and error. We’ve put something in every year. It’s mainly been my older sister and me because my father was fine with the classic menu that he had, but the kids have always been innovating and thinking of different ideas we could do to win the contest.
(Left to right) Greg Parish, Whitney Cheatham, Michael Cheatham
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SB: What were some of the specialty foods that your dad made when your family first started out?
Few people can lay claim to the notion that they were raised by Big Tex — the 55-foot-tall, Lone Star State-loving, barrel-chested animatronic cowboy mascot who welcomes visitors to the State Fair of Texas each year with a mighty “Howdy, folks!” — but Greg Parish of Gourmet Royale sure can. “T here’s a joke among the fair food families that we were raised by Big Tex because we spent so much time on the fairgrounds as kids,” Parish laughs. A second-generation fair food concession aire, Parish and his tight-knit family have developed a roster of jaw-droppingly quirky, mouthwatering foods over the years that are ideal for munching while in motion between livestock shows, barrel racing and rides on the Tilt-A-Whirl. These always playful, often fried creations sometimes bring a few quizzical head scratches when customers first hear about them. Deepfried chicken and waffles on a stick?! But one bite, and it’s obvious that behind each idiosyncratic dish is a chef with the one-of-a-kind fair food mastery necessary to meet such a specific culinary niche.
SB: Before gumbo balls, what were some of the other foods you entered in the contest? GP: We entered a fried red velvet cupcake. We did a deep-fried chicken and waffle on a stick. We did a deep-fried shrimp-and-grits ball, and then we did a deep-fried spaghetti and meatball. From there, we did fried chicken nachos…and that’s a funny story. We had a banner that posted all of the food that we sold, and it read: beer, wine, margaritas, fried chicken, nachos . People would come up and be like, “I’d like to order the fried chicken nachos.” After numerous years of telling people, “We don’t do fried chicken nachos,” I was like, “Hey, Dad, why don’t we try to add that to the menu?” So, we added it, and we put it in the contest. It got a very, very good response. In the years after that, we ventured off a little because we’re also confectioners: We do gourmet popcorn and candies. We did a bacon brittle that was popular, but with all of those entries, the closest we got to winning was the semi-finals. We finally made it to the finals when we did wineand-cheese popcorn, specifically a red wine — Pinot Noir — and cheese popcorn. Then we came back and were like, “Well, we did the deep-friend spaghetti and meatball; let’s do a deep-fried chicken Alfredo ball.” That made it to the finals and was very successful. But right after we did the Alfredo ball — that’s what we called it — the pandemic hit, so we had to take a break. Last year in 2021, we did
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT
the gumbo ball, and the overwhelming response from that was just incredible.
SB: Tell me a little bit about what goes into the gumbo ball. How do you make it, and why do you think it was so popular?
NO FOLSE MOVES
SB: What are the finals of the Big Tex Choice Awards like when you know you have a dish that’s a real contender?
GP: The crazy part about it is that we won two awards for the gumbo balls. We won Most Creative and Best Tasting (Savory). I wasn’t expecting it. It was awards time, and they were like, “And the winner is...then there was a drum roll and all that…for Best Tasting (Savory): the deep-fried seafood gumbo balls!” We thought we should win that category, so I was satisfied. I accepted the award and went back to my seat. I was cool. But then they were like, “For Most Creative…the deep-fried seafood gumbo balls!” And everyone was like, “Dang! Oh my God!” We were blown away, and to make it even more sentimental, my mother had just passed away right before the contest started. My mother was a master chef, and one of her last recipes was working with me on the gumbo ball. She was bedridden, but she was my taste tester. She’d say, “Well, add this, take that out — do this, do that.” And the day we were going to do the photo shoot [for the contest] she passed away. Winning the contest — and to really win how we won — was a great way to honor her legacy as well.
That’s the tradition now. I came up with the gumbo ball myself, and when I told her about it, she was like, “Stop. Don’t say nothing else. That’s what we’re going to go with.” And that’s what we did! She had an idea for the presenta tion, though, that we should make it look more like a deconstructed gumbo by adding a cup of roux on the side for the people to dip the gumbo balls in and really get the effect of a gumbo. We went with it, and then we added crackers and hot sauce for aesthetics. We were just at the kitchen table one day talking, and that’s how we came up with it. It seems simple to us, but everyone is always like, “Wow!” when they try it. We actually entered two items into the contest last year. We did the gumbo ball, and we did a lemon icebox pie ball. If I’m being honest with you, I was more focused on the pie ball than the gumbo ball. But once we entered the gumbo ball into the contest and everyone began to try it, I could see the enthusiasm. When we were at the contest finals and the celebrity judges got to try it, hearing their words and their reaction — it was just mind-blowing.
PHOTO BY ROMERO & ROMERO
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"Although extremely simple, it’s probably the toughest thing I teach to my culinary school at Nicholls State University,” John Folse told Epicurious in 2013. “The first thing I tell them is that everybody says equal parts of oil and flour, but not really. It depends whether you have a fat skin-on baking hen like I’m going to put in the pot to make a hen and andouille gumbo. The fat from the hen and the fat from the andouille cannot be absorbed by just one cup of oil and one cup of flour, so innately I need to trigger my mind to say a cup and a quarter of flour and a cup of oil, because that other quarter cup [of oil] will be extruded from the meats in the pot. I need to know that instinctively without thinking about it; otherwise, I’ve got an inch of fat on top of my gumbo and people will say, ‘What kind of roux is this? What kind of gumbo is that?’”
GP: I’m still trying to figure out why it’s so popular! I guess gumbo is just a very popular dish. The gumbo ball is very simple. It’s about the size of a golf ball, and you get two of them with an order. I came up with the concept one day when I was at Pappadeaux, eating gumbo. I was just like, “Hey, this could be a good idea!” When I’m visualizing a concept, I can usually see it. And I just saw it. I thought, I can do the rice. I can make a rice ball and use the roux to be an adhesive for it, and then we can add four different types of meat to it. So, I made it. It’s a rice ball filled with a roux to give it the seasoning and flavor, then we add the basic gumbo elements. Now in the roux, you do have the trinity — bell pepper, onion and celery — and also bay leaf and spices that go into it. Then we add in Gulf Coast shrimp, two types of crab meat — we do lump crab and blue crab — then andouille sausage and stewed chicken. I love crackers with my gumbo when I’m eating it, crackers and hot sauce. So, to top it off and make it really authentic, when I do the batter [for deep-frying] I combine bread crumbs with crushed saltine crackers. That means when you bite into it, first there’s a crunch, then you’re going to taste the roux; then you’re going to taste the rice; then you’re going to taste all the different types of meat and flavors. I have a niece, and she’s like our good luck charm. She’s our secret weapon. She’s the one who had the idea to put the wine popcorn in the contest a few years back. We had been doing catering and conces sions with it as a popcorn flavor, and to me, it’s normal — wine popcorn seems normal to me. But to everyone else, it’s like, “This is a very creative flavor!” So she told me to enter it because she thought it was very different and would win. I ignored her at first and said, “Oh, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” But I thought about it a little, and I said, “You know what, we’re going to go with your pick.” And we ended up winning, so then the next year I was like, “So, what else you got in mind?”
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I don’t claim to be an expert on making a roux — although some people consider me a gu-roux — but as anyone who has been to one of my Rouses Markets cooking classes or has seen me on WALA in Mobile, Alabama, knows, I love to share what I know. And if there’s one thing you need to know to make a roux, it’s how to stir. That flattened wooden spoon in your hand needs to be an extension of your arm. As you stir, keep pushing the roux out to the edges. You need to make sure that every square inch of the pot is evenly scraped and stirred so that nothing sticks — because if it sticks, it’s going to scorch, and you’ll have to start all over again. – Chef Nino Thibodaux, chef for Rouses Markets ROUX AT THE ZOO ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Every cook knows that the most important part of a good gumbo is the roux. But there is a new type of roux in New Orleans this summer that is getting a lot of attention — not for flavor, but for cuteness! Meet Roux, one of the newest residents at Audubon Zoo. The zoo welcomed the adorable newcomer on Christmas Eve. Roux is a critically endangered Sumatran orangutan, and his birth is cause for celebration. Just as it takes patience to make a good roux, his human care team devoted hours lovingly working to make sure he was healthy. His name pays tribute to one of the key ingredients in making gumbo.
Audubon Zoo is a facility of the not-for-profit Audubon Nature Institute and is located at 6500 Magazine Street in New Orleans. To buy tickets or for more information visit www.auduboninstitute.org/tickets.
In the wild, Sumatran orangutans spend almost all of their lives in the trees in the tropical rainforest. As their forests disappear, so too do the numbers of these beautiful Youanimals.don’t have to travel far to see Roux and his family up close. They have a large home at Audubon Zoo and are drawing plenty of guests eager to watch him grow. You’ll have to look closely; he is still small and clings tightly to his mother, Menari, as she climbs and plays with him in their zoo habitat.
PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO44 ROUSES FALL 2022
By Sarah Baird W ild game has always been a gumbo-making staple for many on the Gulf Coast, who seem to love the ritual of hunting for their dinner almost as much as the fellowship involved in cooking it up afterward. From rabbit and venison to pheasant and wild boar, Cajun cooks have long been some of the most adept hunters and trappers around, and their ability to turn the spoils of hours spent in tree stands or waist-high water into rich, simmering pots of gumbo is practically limitless. For Chef Nathan Richard, a Thibodaux native who has helmed fine dining kitchens across the Southeast for more than 20 years, there’s one type of wild game that flies above the rest when it comes to gumbo ingredients: duck.“Ithink duck hunting — and hunting in general — is full of lessons to be learned about life. It’s all about the memories that you’re making,” Richard explains. “The night before a duck hunt, everyone’s eating and having a good time and making memories. The next morning, you wake up early to go out at 4:30 a.m. and make even more memories. Whether you’re a kid or an adult taking your sons and daughters out for the first time, lifelong memories are made while hunting for wildlife.”
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Hunting also teaches plenty of lessons about the natural world and whereappreciatingfoodcomesfrom.
Duck, GumboDuck,
of duck, then next thing you know, they’re giving it away because they have too much. I think you should take what you need to eat and leave the rest to grow.”
For Richard, hunting humanely also means using all of an animal’s parts — including those bits that might seem intimidating to cook at first blush. “Make sure you use every part of the duck or whatever you kill to the best of your ability, because that duck gave its life for that pot of gumbo,” says Richard, who is a big fan of both duck heart and gizzard. “There are a lot of people who will just take certain things off the duck and throw the rest away. It’s heartbreaking that the rest of the duck is wasted because they’re either too lazy to clean it or they don’t think it tastes good. You took that duck’s life for your meal, and it’s important to treat it properly. It’s all about cooking with respect.”
– Liz Williams, founder, Southern Food and Beverage Museum
CHEF NATHAN RICHARD’S DUCK, OYSTER AND TASSO GUMBO Makes 10-12 servings WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 3 wild ducks, average size, cut into six pieces (see Chef’s notes below) 2 tablespoons Cajun seasoning 3 pounds tasso, cut about ¼-inch thick 1 pint Prestige Oysters (reserve oyster liquor) 1 cup vegetable oil 1½ cups all-purpose flour 3 cups yellow onions, diced 2 cups green bell peppers, diced 1 cup celery, diced ¼ cup garlic, minced 2 bay leaves 3 quarts chicken stock 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 2 tablespoons Tabasco sauce Salt and freshly ground black pepper, 1 cup sliced green onions ½ cup chopped fresh parsley Cooked wild rice or popcorn rice HOW TO PREP: Season duck pieces with Creole seasoning and set aside. Heat oil in a large cast-iron dutch oven over high heat; whisk flour into hot oil to make a roux. It will sizzle when the flour hits the hot oil. Whisk continuously. We are creatures of our environment. When the Acadians settled in the western parts of Louisiana, they found no abundance of tomatoes growing in their swampy environment. They did find and raise delicious foods. They raised pigs and chickens. They became world-famous sausage makers. They worked hard in the fields and had to be self-sufficient in their relative isolation. Their gumbo was and is hearty and robust, made with the traditional trinity and a darkly toasted roux. Duck season does not coincide with tomatoes, anyway. Chicken and andouille gumbo was eaten when the chicken was old and ready for the pot. Tomatoes, when they were to be had, were enjoyed on their own as a fresh treat.
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LENTEN GUMBO ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The St. James Episcopal Church in Baton Rouge has been making and selling Lenten gumbo lunches since 1951. What started out as a one-time gumbo sale to raise money to buy an air conditioner turned into an annual fundraiser for the downtown church. After a two-year break because of COVID, members of the downtown church were back this year on a shortened schedule — the traditional “every Friday during Lent” sale was instead a one-day Jumbo Gumbo event. We can’t wait to get a bowl next year.
What’s a simmer? It means to cook a liquid just below the boiling point; if it’s boiling, it’s too high. A roux is a labor of love. If you don’t have patience or time, don’t attempt to make it, just go to Rouses Markets and buy that jarred roux — just make sure ya mom and dem don’t see ya.
Reduce heat to medium; continue whisking until roux is the color of peanut butter, about 10-15 minutes. Add yellow onions, bell peppers, celery, garlic and bay leaves, and continue stirring the roux with a wooden spoon. Reduce heat to medium-low and add seasoned duck to pot, then increase heat to medium and cook, frequently turning duck pieces until browned, about 10 Addminutes. chicken stock and tasso. Bring gumbo to a boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to medium and simmer for 45 minutes. Stir occasionally, and skim off fat from the surface of gumbo as it simmers.
Add Worcestershire and Tabasco. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Simmer for another 45 minutes or until the duck is tender. Last but not least, add green onions, parsley, oysters and oyster liquor and simmer for no more than 4-5 minutes. Serve over wild rice or popcorn rice.
COURIR DE MARDI GRAS GUMBO ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT The best catch at Cajun country Mardi Gras is a live chicken.
IOWA RABBIT FESTIVAL
KREWE OF KREWES ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT One of the most popular events leading up to Mardi Gras in Lake Charles, Louisiana, is the World Famous Cajun Extravaganza/ Gumbo Cook-Off held at the Lake Charles Civic Center. Lucky festival-goers get the chance to sample different types of gumbo from participants, including the more than 50 Mardi Gras krewes that make up the larger organization called Krewe of Krewes, and area restaurants and organizations. It is one of the best things about Mardi Gras in Lake Charles.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Rabbit gumbo is a featured food at the Iowa (pronounced EYE-oh-way) Rabbit Festival, an event that has become one of the traditions in Southwest Louisiana. The festival takes place the third weekend in March at the Burton Coliseum in Lake Charles.
Chef’s notes: If wild ducks are not available, carry yourself to Rouses Markets and get some domestic ones. Just be aware that they tend to be a little more fatty, so I recommend braising them separately and then adding to the gumbo.
The courir or “run” is a tradition that can trace its winding lineage back to the shores of France. It involves going house to house and asking for “charity” (read: foodstuffs) on the day before Ash Wednesday. In Louisiana’s Cajun country, asking for these edible gifts morphed quickly into the ritual of “begging” for the ingredients to make a gumbo (think: chickens, sausage, rice, onions), which would then be cooked up later in the afternoon.
By Don Dubuc E ach fall there are tens of thousands of small game hunters who head for the piney woods, mixed hardwood forests and swamps to secure a longtime favorite component of stews, gumbos, fricassees, étouffée, barbecues and deep-fried platters. I’m talking about squirrels and rabbits. Hunting small game in Louisiana is the perfect gateway into hunting. It’s relatively inexpensive and, in the case of squirrel and rabbit, the species are abundant — offering plenty of hunting opportunities on public lands.Season dates and bag limits are generous. In Louisiana, the open season runs from the first Saturday in October through the last day of February for both species. The maximum number of animals you can kill and keep in a day, or bag limit, for each is a liberal eight per person per day. There’s also a special spring season for squirrels that runs on private and most public lands from the first Saturday through the last Sunday in May. The daily bag limit during the spring season is three per person. Small game hunting doesn’t require expensive, hi-tech equipment like hunting deer and waterfowl, and can be kept simple. Firearms especially can be simple. Singleaction shotguns in either .410 or 20 gauges are easiest and safest to use. Small caliber rifles such as .22 and the recently developed .17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire (HMR) are legal, but best used where the terrain and hunter density allow for safety. The use of high-powered air rifles is becoming increas ingly popular. In Louisiana and other Gulf Coast states, there are the gray and the considerably larger fox squirrels, each of which have subspecies. They differ in size and have several color variations, but for the most part, gray squirrels are indeed brownish-gray, while the fox squirrels are reddish-orange and black. Both species can produce solid black, or melanistic, phases as well as albino or blond individuals. As with squirrels, there are two species of rabbits in the Southern states: the eastern cottontail and the larger swamp rabbit.
Farther west, you find another species: the long-legged, big-eared jackrabbit. I’ve not noticed a difference in taste between the two squirrel species, but the texture is a different story. While fox squirrels offer more quantity, they are not nearly as tender as the gray and require longer cooking or marinating times. As with all game, younger means more tender, and also determines cooking time. Depending on your recipe, squirrels and rabbits can be cooked whole or in pieces. When serving pieces are used, I butcher both into five parts. The four front and back legs are easily separated from the back loin some cooks call the “saddle.”
Salt and cracked black pepper, to taste Granulated garlic, to taste Favorite Creole seasoning, to taste 1 cup sliced green onions ½ cup chopped parsley Favorite hot sauce, to taste Steamed white rice, for serving HOW TO PREP: In a large cast-iron pot heat vegetable oil over medium heat. Add flour and cook, whisking constantly, until a dark brown roux is achieved. Add onions, celery, bell peppers and minced garlic, and sauté 3-5 minutes, or until vegetables are wilted. Add squirrel and/or rabbit pieces and andouille, and cook 5-7 minutes, or until meats are browned on all sides. Add stock and bring to a rolling boil. Reduce heat and simmer 1½ hours, or until meats are tender. Season to taste with salt and pepper, granulated garlic and Creole seasoning. Stir in green onions and parsley just before serving. Serve hot over steamed white rice and garnish with a dash of hot sauce.
People ask all the time: “What do squirrel and rabbit taste like?” I find it hard to describe, but I think squirrel is similar in color to dark chicken thigh meat, but has a much more robust flavor — close to, but not as unique as, venison. Rabbit, on the other hand, appears much like chicken breast in color and texture and has a much milder flavor than squirrel. I always try to avoid the “tastes like chicken” explanation, because it really doesn’t. However, it’s safe to say any recipe that’s good for chicken, from Southern deep-fried to stewed to spaghetti, is also good for rabbit. Besides ensuring your meat will be moist and tender, one of the reasons I like to combine both squirrel and rabbit in a gumbo is for the diversity of flavors. Both are delicately flavored, and recipes are only limited by the imagination — as evidenced by my mom’s “Squirrel Salad Sandwiches.” Yum! Here’s one of my favorites for either squirrel or rabbit (or a combination of both), which you might find on a camp stove on a chilly fall night.
Squirrel Away This Recipe for Hunting Season 47WWW.ROUSES.COM ROUXTEAM
DON’S SQUIRREL AND RABBIT COMBO GUMBO Makes 10-12 servings WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 4 squirrels or 2 rabbits (or any combination of squirrel and rabbit), cut in serving size pieces and marinated overnight in milk to lighten and tenderize 1 pound andouille, sliced 1 cup vegetable oil 1 cup flour 2 cups diced onions 1 cup dried celery 1 cup diced green bell peppers ¼ cup minced garlic 3 quarts water or chicken stock
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The Propeller Club of Mobile, chartered in 1929, enthusiastically advocates for the maritime industry in the Port of Mobile. For 25 years it has hosted the Annual Rufus B. Lee Gumbo Cook-Off at Cooper Riverside Park.
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Jefferson Parish’s oldest festival, the Bridge City Gumbo Festival, takes place October 14, 15 and 16. Bridge City was proclaimed the “Gumbo Capital of the World” by Governor Edwin W. Edwards in 1973.
gumbo festivals & cook-offs
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As we recalled recently, the early gumbo contest had little more than a dozen entries and the crowd in attendance was mostly family and friends of the contestants. The chamber now boasts that the competition brings about 100 teams and 30,000 visitors to the Queen City.
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— Marcelle Bienvenu
A gumbo cook-off is part of the annual Blessing of the Fleet festivities at St. Margaret Catholic Church in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, the Seafood Capital of Alabama. The Blessing of the Fleet tradition dates back to 1949.
The Louisiana Gumbo Festival is held in Chackbay, the “Gumbo Capital of Louisiana,” as declared by Governor Edwin W. Edwards back in in the ’70s. The Gumbo Festival has been going strong every October for more than 45 years.
After a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19, the annual World Championship Cookoff is back in downtown New Iberia and will be celebrated Oct. 8 and 9. According to the Greater New Iberia Chamber of Commerce, “the competition began over 30 years ago when the chamber set out on a history-changing journey to generate revenue for the chamber, but also celebrate something that we do better than anyone else: Cook a wicked gumbo! With less than a dozen chefs serving gumbo off their truck beds in 1989, the event quickly turned into a serious one, with more and more chefs joining the competition every year to show off their culinary skills.”
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Believe it or not, I was one of the judges for the first cookoff, along with a friend of mine, Stan Dry, from my USL days. He was a track star from Byrd High School in Shreveport. Stan had risen through the ranks of culinary journalism to become editor-at-large for Food & Wine magazine in the Big Apple, but he had reached a point of his life when he wanted to leave the city life and live in South Louisiana, far from the madding crowd.
FALL 2022 THE GUMBO ISSUE I WILL PLAY FOR GUMBO 23 INGREDIENTS AND ME gumbo“Anyonewhosaysthisisn’tcanlickmyspoon.” TOMATOTEAM
Bring home a little taste of Italy.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Recently on vacation in Orange Beach, Alabama, we went to eat at Fresh Off The Boat, a really delicious, fun and casual seafood restaurant where they’ll even cook up your catch for you. They have the best bourbon selection in Orange Beach. They had a seafood gumbo on the menu made with tomatoes. Since we were talking about tomatoes in gumbo, I wanted to try it. Lower Alabama gumbo falls somewhere between Cajun and Creole. It’s thicker, like Cajun gumbo — and this was very thick gumbo – and it almost always has tomatoes. The roux was lighter, too. (The color of the roux is just as fiercely debated as tomatoes in gumbo around here.) Louisiana dark roux looks like melted chocolate; Alabama dark roux is lighter, more like the color of a paper bag. I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it — I just don’t know if I’d call it gumbo.
Donny Rouse, CEO, 3rd Generation
PHOTO BY CHANNING CANDIES
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HOW DO YOU GUMBO?
Gumbo or No? First you make a roux. Or do you? There’s no roux in the summer seafood gumbo pictured on our cover. It is thickened, instead, with okra. There are people who will insist that a gumbo isn’t a gumbo without a roux. I disagree. Cooks were thickening gumbo with okra long before roux became popular. Whether it’s okay to cook that okra with tomatoes, even in the summertime…well, that’s up for debate. I live by the “no tomatoes in gumbo ever” rule. I’m told that okra gumbo is the one exception some Cajuns — not me — make. Paul Prudhomme used canned tomatoes in his okra gumbo. I don’t like it, but I get it. When you cook okra with tomatoes, the natural acidity in the tomatoes helps reduce some of that gooey texture of the okra. But if you, like me, don’t think tomatoes belong anywhere near gumbo, you can just use frozen okra in your gumbo, since it doesn’t get as gummy as fresh. The “tomatoes in gumbo” debate is just the tip of the culinary iceberg. Do you put tomatoes in your jambalaya? What about your étouffée? Food writers say it’s the difference between Cajun and Creole cooking…but I say, not so fast. I grew up Cajun in Thibodaux. I will argue all day long that jambalaya, like gumbo, should be brown, and that étouffée should not contain tomatoes. There are chefs and cooks, especially in New Orleans — including people who work at Rouses — who swear that adding tomatoes is the only way to go. Yet the chef who made the okra and tomato gumbo on our cover is a Cajun from Raceland, which is just down the road from Thibodaux. So obviously, this might also be a bit of a “to each their own” Yousituation.might notice that this magazine’s issue has two covers. If you prefer brown gumbo, flip the magazine over, and start from that side. If you are #teamtomato, you’ve come to the right place too — just start from the other side!
YEAR OF GUMBO ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT This issue is just a taste of what’s to come. In September we kick off our Year of Gumbo, with stories, recipes and more for every month of the year. Follow along @rousesmarkets social media. #gumbolife Table of Contents In Every Issue 1 Gumbo or No? by Donny Rouse Whatcha Got In That Pot? 6 Chef Allison Richard Stirs the Pot by David W. Brown 9 I Will Play for Gumbo by Alison Fensterstock 11 Bún Mam: Vietnamese Seafood Gumbo by Sarah Baird 14 Buffett-Style Gumbo by Susan Langenhennig Granger 21 23 Ingredients and Me by P. Johnson 23 Good, Bad or Just Medi-Okra by David W. Brown Official Supermarket of the New Orleans Saints 27 Roux Dat by David W. Brown 29 Jumbo Gumbo by David W. Brown Recipes 8 Chef Allison Richard’s Shrimp & Crab, Okra & Tomato Gumbo 16 Lucy’s GumboSummerSignatureSeafood 17 Lulu’s Crazy Creola Seasoning Marketing & Advertising Director Tim Acosta Creative Director & Editor Marcy Nathan Art Director, Layout & Design Eliza Schulze Illustrator Kacie Galtier Marketing Coordinator Harley Breaux Patti AdrienneStallardCrezo Advertising & Marketing Amanda StephanieKennedyHopkinsNancyBessonTarynClementMaryAnnFlorey Design Intern Peyton finch COVER PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO TOMATOES ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Our fall crop of local Creole tomatoes will be available late October and will continue to grow until January or the first frost. Any red, ripe tomato grown in Louisiana can be called a Creole, but most Creole tomatoes are grown in the River Parishes, where the alluvial soil gives them that unique tomato flavor. OKRA ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Okra is in season from summer through early fall. Some people are put off by the slimy or gooey texture okra gets when it is cooked, but that mucilage (or slime) acts as a great thickener for gumbo. CONECUH ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Conecuh Cajun style smoked sausage is extra spicy and is a great addition to gumbo. The delicate snap you hear when cooking Alabama’s favorite sausage comes from its all-natural sheep and hog casings. gumbonationalday is october 12! 3WWW.ROUSES.COM TOMATOTEAM
NEWORLEANSROAST.COMPJSCOFFEE.COMFindusonthecoffeeaisle!START YOUR DAY the New Orleans way! START YOUR DAY the New Orleans way!
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“Anyonewhosaysthisisn'tgumbocanlickmyspoon.”
Chef Allison Richard Stirs the Pot
By David W. Brown When it comes to the official state food of Louisiana, Chef Allison Richard has a message for those who might question using okra and tomato in the big pot: “Anyone who says this isn't gumbo can lick my spoon.”
PHOTO BY CARUSO
One catch: The gumbo does not have a roux in it. “I was like, is this really gumbo, Mom?” to which her mom replied, “People put shrimp and sausage together in a gumbo, Allison. They can put tomatoes and no roux in it, Ultimately,too!” says Richard, gumbo is just a “soup with a bunch of stuff in it.” It’s not a stew because it shouldn’t be that thick. “It should still have some viscosity. But you can absolutely make a gumbo without roux if you have the right texture and the right technique.”
She lived with one of her grandmothers while at culinary school. She went to France for a four-month summer intensive. “As much as you learn in school, you learn way more by just traveling and eating,” says Richard.
“When you are cooking in New Orleans, customers know what food is supposed to taste like. To cook for the city of New
Richard definitely grew up making gumbo. She was born 50 miles south of New Orleans, in Raceland, a town on Bayou Lafourche (and the birthplace of Los Angeles Angels pitcher Aaron Loup). Her mom and dad worked a lot, so home cooking wasn’t always a top priority. Her grandmothers, both of whom had raised several kids, always had something on the stove, however. And quite often, that something was gumbo. Every gumbo is unique, of course. The debates over what a gumbo is and isn’t could fill a book (and do, in fact, fill this issue of Rouses Magazine). But Richard’s grand mothers’ gumbos were very, very different. In fact, when they visited her maternal grand mother, her mom would warn her before they went inside: “Don’t ask what’s in it. Just eat it. It’s going to be good, but do not ask what is inRichardit.” says of her grandmother: “She was known for just taking just about anything and putting it in a stew, in a fricassee, in a gumbo — you name it. So I’ve been around a multitude of things because of her.”
R ichard is a chef, manager, and owner of the High Hat Café, a neighborhood restaurant on Freret Street known for its Southern“Gumbocuisine.issuch a strange dish,” she says, “It’s a little like mole: If you don’t grow up with it, can you really make it? That’s how I look at Sheit.” says that okra and tomato gumbo has been in her family for a very long time. “It comes from my mom’s side, which is the Hebert side. My grandmother lived in Pointe-aux-Chênes, which is way down south of Houma on your way to Dulac. We would eat it when we were younger.”
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Growing up around such foods — and particularly Cajun, Creole, and Southern cuisine — is how chefs and home cooks really come to understand their dishes on an intuitive level. She calls mole — the variety of complex sauces found in traditional Mexican cuisine — a good point of comparison because, unless you’ve lived your whole life around it, it can be hard to understand the nuances beyond the variations in ingredients. “It’s a mixture of peppers and chocolate and seasonings, and you can understand the techniques and the background of it, and how to make it, but someone who grew up with it will just know when you get it wrong.” Gumbo, she says, is the same way. If you grew up with it, you get it, and can deviate from the traditional methods with greater ease because of your fluency with the dish.
The early years in any aspiring chef’s career, she explains, are about learning and refining the techniques of the culinary arts. Only then is one able to focus on what he or she really likes. This is where she really came to find a love and appreciation of Southern cuisine in general — with gumbo high on the list. “It’s comfortable,” she explains. “It was always there for me. My mom cooks what she knew, which was Cajun cooking. If you’re sick, here’s gumbo. So those sorts of dishes, each one has memories attached to Whileit.” in Natchez, Richard was on the opening teams for a couple of new restau rants there, and she learned that she enjoyed helping members of the cooking staff — especially those in the hardest jobs, like fry cooks — find their passion for cuisine, and to lean into the hard jobs because those are the ones that matter immensely.
Her culinary skills as a young person were further enhanced at home. “My mom was a nurse, and she worked long hours, and so I would start dinner before she got home,” she says. “My mom would leave little instructions like, ‘boil the pasta’ and ‘cut the potatoes’ — stuff like that.” When she was ready to go to college, Richard went to Louisiana State University and majored in psychology. It was her first week of graduate school for social work, however, when she had an epiphany: She hated it. That day, she went to Thibodaux (right next to Raceland) and enrolled at the Chef John Folse Culinary Institute, the home of Louisiana’s only four-year culinary arts program.Shehad cooked previously in restaurants that no one would describe as prestigious. “I cooked at a Moe’s Southwest Grill, which is like a Mexican Subway, where you come in and order a burrito and choose your toppings down the line,” she says. Next, she worked the “front of the house” — the host and server side — at a Buffalo Wild Wings. She got a job as a cook at a Counter Culture, which is a yogurt shop that serves sandwiches.Thedayshe quit school, she knew only that she liked to cook. “I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into!” she says. “It turned out to be the best thing that I could have ever done.”
While in culinary school, fate connected her with Frank Brigtsen, the legendary New Orleans chef and master of gumbo who owns the Uptown establishment, Brigtsen’s Restaurant. Over his 50-year career, he has won innumerable awards and championed New Orleans culture and cuisine. “He’s like the king, right?” says Richard. “The king of New Orleans cooking.” Next, she worked for famed chef Susan Spicer at Mondo in Lakeview. After such intense experiences with two of the top chefs in the city, and at some of the best restaurants, Richard needed a break. She moved to Natchez, Mississippi. “It was a soul-searching kind of experiment,” she says, “and it helped me realize what it was I liked about cooking.”
– Liz Williams, founder, Southern Food and Beverage Museum
CHEF ALLISON RICHARD’S SHRIMP & CRAB, OKRA & TOMATO GUMBO
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To make shrimp dust, pulse dried shrimp in a blender and process until it turns into powder; set aside. Coat the edges of a large ovenproof pot with vegetable oil. Add the okra and tomatoes plus 3 tablespoons of the vegetable oil to the pot. Mix well. Cover the pot with an ovenproof lid. Place covered pot in the preheated oven and bake, stirring occasionally, for 1½ to 2 hours, or until the slime has disappeared. Remove lid and bake uncovered for the last 15 minutes of the cooking time, or until okra is tender. Meanwhile, chop the remaining vegetables, divide in half, and set aside. Reserve any trimmings for the stock. To make the stock, toast crabs in a 400°F oven for 30 minutes, then place them in large stockpot with 3 gallons of water and any trimmings from the vegetable cuttings, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer over moderately low heat for 25 minutes. Strain the stock into a very large, heatproof bowl. In the stockpot, heat the remaining oil and the butter. Add half the chopped vegetables; cook over moderate heat, stirring, until softened. Add the remaining vegetables, shrimp dust, tomato paste, garlic powder, minced garlic, thyme, cayenne pepper and bay leaves. Season with salt and pepper, and cook over moderately low heat, stirring until fragrant, about 5 minutes. Stir in the Worcestershire sauce and hot sauce. Add the okra and tomato blend to the pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and let simmer for 30 minutes. Add the shrimp to the pot and cook until just pink throughout, about 2 minutes. Remove bay leaves and season with more salt and pepper to taste. Fold in the crabmeat and serve with steamed rice.
Let’s face it: There are no rules today, only traditions. We can use filé, okra and roux in the same gumbo pot if we want. With the advent of refrigeration, we don’t always eat with the seasons. But being bound by our traditions, the rule of tomatoes or no tomatoes is inviolate in most Louisiana households. Tradition rules!
Orleans is one of the proudest things you can do in your life because this is a city that knows food,” she says. When she returned to the city, she took a job for Chef Adolfo Garcia, who she knew from culinary school, and worked her way up the ranks at High Hat Cafe, first to sous chef and then chef. In March 2020, the COVID quaran tine restrictions were like a wrecking ball through the service industry, and High Hat was affected like everywhere else. Richard and a handful of the management staff kept the restaurant going, switching exclusively to takeout orders. When one of the frontof-house managers decided to leave the service industry, Richard took over the job so that High Hat would not have to lay off its sous chefs in order to hire from outside the company.“Ithought it would be momentary — maybe six months or something like that,” she says. It ended up being permanent. “I really enjoy the front of the house, but the kitchen still callsSheme.”calls High Hat her last restaurant. “I’m not going anywhere,” she says. “I’ll do whatever I need to do to make this restaurant work. Out in the front I am, but I still get to cook on the reg.” One of the items on High Hat’s menu? Gumbo, of course. And yes, it is made with a roux — but as Allison Richard will tell you, it doesn’t have to be.
Makes 3 gallons WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 3 1.2-ounce packs dried shrimp, for shrimp dust 2 pounds fresh okra, sliced into ½-inch rounds 3 cups chopped, peeled and seeded ripe tomatoes, or 3 cups chopped canned tomatoes, including their liquid ½ cup vegetable oil, separated 2 packs gumbo crabs 4 cups diced yellow onions 2 cups diced celery 2 cups diced poblano peppers 1 bunch green onions, sliced thin 1 bunch parsley, chopped 3 tablespoons butter 2 15-ounce cans tomato paste 2 tablespoons garlic powder 1 teaspoon minced garlic 1 teaspoon fresh chopped thyme 3 pinches cayenne pepper 4 bay leaves Salt and pepper, to taste ½ cup Worcestershire sauce ½ cup Crystal Hot Sauce 3 pounds medium shrimp, peeled and deveined 1 pound lump crabmeat, picked over Steamed rice, for serving HOW TO PREP: Preheat oven to 300°F.
(The deep Jimmy Buffett cut “Reservation at Preservation Hall” is a paean to that era, name-checking the original Preservation Hall band piano player Sweet Emma Barrett and the “old boys’ sound.” Buffett didn’t play that tune when he made a surprise appear ance onstage at the Hall late one Jazz Fest weekend night in 2015, but he did pause between songs to shake up a margarita and auction it off to the delighted Parrot Heads in the crowd, raising money for the venerable jazz club’s nonprofit education arm.)
The 2011 official Jazz Fest poster features festival favorite Jimmy Buffett, painted by New Orleans artist Garland Robinette.
I Will Play for Gumbo
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“I Will Play for Gumbo” is a lighthearted, playful song in a catalog that’s as rich as a good roux with whimsical odes to things like frozen booze, tropical retreats and the famous cheeseburger in paradise (heaven on Earth with an onion slice.) “I don’t smoke, I don’t shoot smack, but I got a spicy monkey riding on my back,” he sings. “It’s a little like religion and a lot like sex — you should never know when you’re gonna get it next.” But it still tells a little story.
Jimmy Buffett is a storyteller, and gumbo is, too. Foodways historians trace different elements of its origins to African, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Caribbean and Native American cooking, with ingredients and techniques both native to where gumbo cooks came from and modified by what could be grown, caught, or hunted where they wound up. There’s roux, okra or filé for thickening agents, and rice or potato salad as added starch. Tomatoes are a must for some, and sacrilege to others. Turkey-bone gumbo means Thanksgiving just passed, and gumbo z’herbes means Easter is coming. The Prejean’s gumbo Buffett bought for himself and a lucky friend (or was he planning to eat both servings himself? No judgment), with its quail and pheasant, speaks to the community of game-bird hunters around the restaurant.
Jimmy’s sister and fellow restaurateur, Lucy “Lulu” Buffett, has a Signature Summer Gumbo in her 2017 cookbook Gumbo Love that is full of summer vegetables like okra and tomato, melding garden flavors with blue crab claws and fat, wild-caught Gulf shrimp. Take a spoonful and you can practically see the white sands of Alabama beaches through her chef’s eyes. Like the music — New Orleans funk, jazz, rap and R&B, Lafayette’s Cajun and zydeco ballads and waltzes, Jimmy Buffett’s seaside songscapes — gumbo has terroir.
By Alison Fensterstock
T he Lafayette restaurant, which would have celebrated 30 consecutive years of serving festivalgoers in 2022 if not for a two-year interruption courtesy of the coronavirus pandemic, makes some of the festival’s unofficial signature dishes. Their pheasant, quail & andouille gumbo and crawfish enchiladas dependably land on foodie roundups of the best of the fest. As usual, that afternoon the booth was slammed. The staffers taking orders and handing back change were far too busy to register that they’d just sold two Styrofoam containers of their famous dark-roux concoction to Jimmy Buffett. He wasn’t even playing the festival that year — he’d just stopped by to hear some music, and apparently, to pick up his ownBylunch.thetime the beloved Gulf Coast native and balladeer of beachside pleasures released the song “I Will Play for Gumbo,” which appears on his 1999 top-ten album Beach House on the Moon, it had been a heck of a long time since he actually might have had to do that. As The Times-Picayune noted in its report on his Jazz Fest meal, his reported fee for headlining the festival’s main stage three years before was easily enough for him to have treated everyone on the New Orleans Fair Grounds that day to their own bowl of gumbo — with enough left over for a mango freeze and a rosemint tea, too.Back in the late ’60s, though, it was a different story. Like a lot of striving young singer-songwriters, he’d gone to landlocked Nashville to knock on the doors of Music Row. After a couple of albums that failed to set the country charts on fire, he drifted back down to the warmer climes and unstressed vibes of the Gulf states, where, as itinerant bohemian musicians have done for centuries, he busked. Like the title character of “Mr. Bojangles,” the 1968 song by his running partner and Texas songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker, Buffett performed for drinks and tips in laid-back tourist meccas like Key West — which would become his new home base — and in New Orleans’ French Quarter, where, at the time, hippie folksingers intermingled with beatnik poets, civil-rights organizers and ace players from the traditional-jazz revival scene in coffeehouses, bars and on the street.
The guy at the front of the line at the Prejean’s window in Food Area 2 on Jazz Fest’s second Friday of 2014 easily looked like any other baby-boomer Jazz Dad type: T-shirt, cargo shorts, khaki ball cap, sunglasses, backpack, and a pretty nice watch.
Jimmy Buffett appeared on Jazz Fest’s official poster in 2011. Garland Robinette, the longtime WWL-TV and radio host who was enjoying a second act as a successful fine-art portraitist, was hired to paint the image that would represent both the artist and the festival for that year. The crafting of the marquee festival artwork is a collabora tive process, during which the painter and Art4Now, the Jazz Fest partner company that’s been producing the posters since the mid-’70s, toss ideas back and forth over the course of months, working to make a collect ible image that represents the featured musician, the vibe of New Orleans, and the festival itself. By 2011, of course, Jimmy Buffett was a veritable mega-industry, a brand juggernaut of sun and sandals and salted rims, pirates and parrots and pink crustaceans that had launched restaurants, resorts, cruises, food and liquor products, clothing, and even a satellite radio station. There was plenty of tropical-paradise imagery Robinette could have used to celebrate the Buffett aesthetic. But instead, he painted the singer as he might have appeared in New Orleans 50 years before — not headlining the Jazz Fest main stage or an arena for tens of thousands of Parrot Heads, but on a French Quarter street corner, in faded jeans and Hawaiian shirt, with the long hair and thick mustache that was his signature look in the ’70s. Still the unknown troubadour with no particular place to go, he’s smiling wide over the acoustic guitar strapped around his shoulders. Its battered case is open by his feet, hopeful that some passerby will stop to hear a verse or two and decide it’s worth throwing in a dollar. The cardboard sign propped up beside it is an anachronistic wink to the future: It reads, “I Will Play for Gumbo.”
– Poppy Tooker, Producer and Host, “Louisiana Eats!”
Lulu Buffett, who has gumbos on the menu at her three waterfront restaurants in Gulf Shores, Destin and Myrtle Beach, has shared several of her recipes, and the stories behind them, over the years. Regarding his helpless gumbo addiction, in “I Will Play For Gumbo,” Jimmy sings: “It started at my grandma’s, in her kitchen by the sea / She warned me when she told me, ‘Son, the first one’s free.’” Lulu confirmed that with a little more earnestness in an interview with the Southern lifestyle magazine Garden & Gun in 2017. “Just about everybody who grew up on the Gulf has a story about their mother’s gumbo, or their grandmother’s,” she told a gumbo reporter. “As kids, we’d go see my grandmother once a week. She’d make all sorts of things: potato salad, cake… But there was always gumbo — and she was a great cook.” Both siblings took something away from grandma’s kitchen; Lulu made gumbo, and Jimmy sang its praises.
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Traditionally, tomatoes have always been the great dividing line between Creole and Cajun gumbos. Those bright, red, misshapen tomatoes growing so plentifully in the Mississippi’s alluvial soil even share the name “Creole.” But no one has ever been able to say when or why that division between brown and red gumbos and jambalayas occurred. Tomatoes balance the dish with a touch of acidity — but to Leah Chase, it was all about the color. “Creoles just love red,” Leah would say. She always took that bright accent further, adding a touch of sweet Hungarian paprika to further brighten the finished dish.
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT As the menu states, the “world’s best seafood gumbo” — and “the best fried shrimp in the entire civilized world” — just might be at Doc’s Seafood Shack and Oyster Bar in Orange Beach. You can get the gumbo and the shrimp, as well as a steak at nearby Doc’s Seafood and Steaks Restaurant.
Don’t worry, though — the relative scarcity of bún mam on menus simply means you’ll have the thrill of seeking it out: maybe in travels to the bustling Vietnamese markets of Houston or even in the Mekong Delta itself. Closer to home, why not ask Vietnamese friends or neighbors if they’d help you learn how to make the dish, perhaps even swapping gumbo-cooking tips for bún mam pointers that have been passed down through your respective families. Because, at their core, both dishes are about staying delectably — and distinctively — grounded
By Sarah Baird N o matter where you travel around the globe, there’s a specific type of delicious beauty found in dishes that are firmly rooted in place: those creations that pull so directly from close-to-home sources and the bounty of local land and sea that it’s practi cally impossible to untangle what you’re eating from your surroundings. This sort of culinary osmosis gives deeper meaning to each bite, and in South Louisiana, is perhaps best embodied by gumbo. Whether you’re gobbling up a bowl of Creole-leaning or Cajun-style gumbo, the oysters might’ve been harvested just miles from where you’re dining — and your mealtime companion may very well have trolled for the behemoth shrimp hiding in the dish’s dark roux broth. Similarly, in the Soc Trang province of Vietnam south of Ho Chi Minh City, bún mam is a dish that completely envelopes the richness and bounty of the Mekong Delta in a bowl, creating a splendidly layered and textured soup that embraces the gastro nomic fertility of its birthplace with vigor. Often referred to as “Vietnamese gumbo” for its complexity of flavors and diverse mouthfeel, bún mam’s foundation begins
Lilly notes that while many types of fish that are traditionally used for the dish might be nearly impossible to find outside of Vietnam, there are plenty of good substitutes. She recommends using salmon head or tilapia, shrimp or calamari through the serving pot in the middle of the table to cook it, then bring it back to your bowl to eat.” This ensures that the seafood doesn’t get overcooked in a dish where the remaining ingredients benefit from a lengthy time in the pot.
Be forewarned, though: Bún mam isn’t an easily discovered staple at most Vietnamese restaurants along the Gulf Coast. Unlike bún bò hue (a sweet-and-salty beef shank and rice noodle soup), bún riêu cua (a tomatoand pork-based soup with crab and rice noodles) and, of course, the many variations on pho, bún mam hasn’t found the same kind of slurp-worthy ubiquity across the region.
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slightly sour broth. Yes, the wafting scent of mam can be arresting at first sniff for the uninitiated, but it is the tangy, funky corner stone ingredient of the meal. Mam holds the umamiWhenkey.served, there’s a veritable forest of greens and garnishes available to top the bún mam: water spinach, cabbage, banana blossoms, lime, bean sprouts, water lily shoots, chives, and a garden’s worth of fresh herbs and blanched vegetables just waiting to add a light, vegetative quality to the swirling density of funky intensity. (If you’re feeling the need for extra heat, a fish pastestuffed chili is an option for taking the heady soup up yet another notch.)
“Bún mam is a delicacy, and something that’s mostly eaten when family gets together around holidays, like when we’re celebrating the new year. Not everyone from Vietnam knows how to make this dish, though, because it comes from one region in the South,” says Trinh “Lilly” Vuong, owner of Lilly’s Café in New Orleans. Lilly’s husband, Keit, is from the area of Vietnam where bún mam originates, so he helms the kitchen when cooking the dish at home. “It takes a long time to cook — a lot like gumbo — and it feeds a lot of people!”
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O n most summer weekends when I was a kid, when the weather was good — and by good, I mean, furnace-hot with humidity thick as a sponge — my father was out in our boat. A successful business owner by profession, dad worked hard, but fished harder. He lived to be on the water, casting for specks and reds in the brackish marshes off Venice, Louisiana.
My poor father needed a son. Instead, he got two daughters. My older sister wasn’t much interested in dad’s twin passions: boating and fishing. But me, I was right there with him, his little pigtailed sidekick bopping around the center console. Eventually, my parents bought a fishing camp on Trappers Canal, a sandy spit of land about a 15-minute boat ride from Venice. The canal was populated with Buffett-Style Gumbo Susan Langenhennig Granger shrimp boat reusable tote,
Gumbo Love encapsulates that easy/ delicious vibe but in written form. From cucumber margaritas to crawfish cornbread casserole, the book is full of recipes that make you want to head into the kitchen and invite over a few friends. As I flipped through the pages, though, one recipe stopped me short: Lucy’s Signature Summer Seafood Gumbo. Now wait a minute, gumbo…in the summer? Down here on the Gulf Coast, don’t we always proclaim the first chill of autumn — even when it barely nudges the thermometer past 80 degrees — to be “gumbo weather?” Gumbo, at least in my family, is cold-weather eating. My proud Cajun husband could subsist on dark roux in the winter months. But mention it in August, and he would check to see if I’d fallen on my head. So, I called up Buffett for some insight. “My grandmother had a pot of seafood gumbo on the stove on Fridays all year round, being Catholic,” said Buffett, who grew up in Pascagoula, Mississippi. That Friday gumbo would feed the whole family and leave enough for leftovers. “The smell would wind its way out of the kitchen, down the driveway to greet us in a welcoming cloud,” she wrote in the book.
Gumbo literally means okra (the word gumbo is widely accepted to have come from ki ngombo, the Bantu term for okra), and fields are bursting with the long slender fingers at this time of year.
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camps on both banks, with about a 60-40 mix of commercial fishermen and recre ational folks. Total population pre-Katrina probably numbered less than 20 or so on a busyOnweekend.Fridayafternoons, dad and I would pack up ice chests, our bathing suits and fishing clothes, sunscreen, bug spray and some groceries, and haul the boat down from New Orleans to Venice, getting to the launch before dusk. As the boat cut through the passes, pointed toward Trappers, we’d keep an eye out for red wing blackbirds, brown pelicans and egrets. Maybe a dolphin or two would swim alongside us, cutting in and out of the wake. Those camp weekends were quintessential Gulf Coast living: Get up at dawn, fish hard until mid-morning, take a snooze in the AC at midday, then out on the water again in late afternoon to catch the running tide. We set out traps along our dock for crabs and bought fresh shrimp from the local shrimpers. If we were lucky, our neighbor at the camp next door might have molting soft shells, and he’d bring us a few to fry up. To this day, when I smell salty air mixed with sunscreen, I have a Proustian moment, flooded with memories of ice chests heavy with fish, crabs and shrimp, and so many incredible meals. The bounty of the Gulf Coast spoiled me rotten. Wasn’t everyone’s meal swimming just hours before it landed on their plate? I recalled all of this recently as I picked up a copy of the gorgeous cookbook Gumbo Love: Recipes for Gulf Coast Cooking, Enter taining, and Savoring the Good Life by Lucy “LuLu” Buffett. Yes, that Buffett. She’s Jimmy’s sister. More important, she owns LuLu’s, one of the most fun restaurants in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Since the restaurant is perched on the side of the Intracoastal Waterway, you can dive into LuLu’s L.A. (Lower Alabama) Caviar (aka black-eyed peas in balsamic vinaigrette) while admiring the boats navigating the no-wake zone. It’s the perfect kind of Gulf Coast people watching.
Suddenly, this summer gumbo was making a whole lot of sense. In Louisiana, the spring/brown shrimp season generally runs from May to July, while the fall/white shrimp season typically opens in mid-August. The seasons are roughly similar in Mississippi and Alabama. “During the summer, brown shrimp make up the majority of the catch,” according to the Gulf Shores and Orange Beach Tourism Department at GulfShores.com. “In the fall and sometimes late summer, white shrimp may end up in the trawl. White shrimp tend to be considerably larger.”
For those who still object to the thought of a hot, steamy, dark roux dish when it feels like 110 degrees outside, stop and consider
Buffett considers gumbo a year-round dish, cooked to feed the masses; to celebrate weddings, christenings, birthdays and milestones, as well as to soothe the soul at funerals. “Every kid that has gotten married, I made the gumbo for the party,” she said. “I have taken gallons of gumbo to a wedding for someone who is like a daughter to me. And when someone passes away, we say, ‘Let’s get the funeral box ready,’ and we send gumbo and other goodies. People are always so appreciative. It’s the best medicine.”Buffetthas a whole suite of seasonal gumbos in her book. When the weather finally (finally!) gets that crisp edge, she prefers a smoky gumbo with chicken and andouille, filé, shrimp and maybe some oysters if they look good. She also has a recipe for “True Acadian (Cajun) Gumbo” with wild-caught Gulf shrimp, oysters, lump blue crabmeat and filé. (Notice the absence of okra and tomatoes in those.)
Today, eating locally grown, seasonal ingredients is a point of pride for food lovers. But back before refrigeration was widespread and affordable, eating food in season was just, well, eating. In summer, blue crabs, brown and white shrimp, and plenty of produce are fresh and abundant on the Gulf Coast. And, if you’re lucky, maybe you have a few late-season tomatoes still on the vine before the heat finally sapped the life out of the plants.
Add the celery and cook, stirring continu ously, for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the bell pepper and cook, stirring continuously, for 2 to 3 minutes more. The mixture should resemble a pot of black beans in color and texture.
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PHOTO BY ANGIE MOSIER, FROM GUMBO LOVE
½ cup fresh lemon juice Cooked white rice for serving HOW TO PREP: Peel and devein the shrimp. (If you’re making your own stock, reserve the heads and shells to make the stock.) Refrigerate the shrimp and crabmeat until ready to use. If using fresh tomatoes, fill a medium sauce pan with water. Bring to a boil. Carefully drop the tomatoes into the boiling water and cook for 1 minute. Remove with a slotted spoon and let cool. The skins will slip off easily. Remove the cores and coarsely chop the tomatoes over a bowl to retain as much juice as possible. Set aside. (If using canned tomatoes, chop each tomato into eighths and return them to the juice in the can.) To make the roux, in a large stockpot (about 10 quarts), heat the vegetable oil over medi um-high heat. When the oil is hot, gradually add the flour, whisking continuously, and cook, stirring and adjusting the heat as nec essary to keep it from burning, until the roux is a dark mahogany color, 25 to 35 minutes. Be careful: If the roux burns, you will have to start all over again. Add the onion to the roux and stir for 2 to 3 minutes. (The onion will sizzle and steam when it hits the hot roux, so caution is ad vised. All seasoned gumbo cooks have roux battle scars on one or both arms.)
LUCY’S SIGNATURE SUMMER SEAFOOD GUMBO Makes 14-16 servings (From Gumbo Love: Recipes for Gulf Coast Cooking, Entertaining, and Savoring the Good Life by Lucy Buffett) WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 3 pounds medium wild-caught Gulf shrimp, heads on 2 pounds cooked blue crab claw meat, picked through for shells, handled carefully to keep the meat in big chunks 4 large ripe tomatoes, or 1 (28-ounce) can whole tomatoes with their juices ¾ cup vegetable oil or bacon grease
this: Do you eat other warm foods in the summertime? Would you turn down a plate of spaghetti and meatballs just because it’s hot outside? Nah. Why should gumbo be any different?
1 cup all-purpose flour 2 large onions, coarsely chopped 1 bunch celery, coarsely chopped, including leaves 2 green bell peppers, coarsely chopped 8 cups shrimp or seafood stock, heated 2 to 3 teaspoons sea salt, or to taste 1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper 2 tablespoons dried thyme 4 bay leaves 1 teaspoon dried oregano 1 teaspoon dried basil 2 tablespoons LuLu’s Crazy Creola Seasoning (recipe follows), or other Creole seasoning ¼ cup hot sauce 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce 4 blue crab bodies, if available (optional) 2½ pounds fresh okra, chopped into ¼-inch pieces, or thawed frozen cut okra 2 cups finely chopped green onions ½ cup finely chopped fresh parsley
Add the heated stock and the tomatoes with their juices. Stir in the salt, black pepper, cayenne, thyme, bay leaves, oregano, basil, Creole seasoning, hot sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Bring the gumbo to a boil and cook for 5 minutes, then reduce
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the heat to maintain a slow simmer. Add the crab bodies (if using) and simmer, uncovered, for about 1 hour. Add the okra and bring the gumbo to a boil. Cook for 5 minutes. Reduce the heat to main tain a slow simmer and cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes, or until the okra has lost its bright green color and cooked down like the other vegetables. If the gumbo gets too thick, add a little water. If it is too thin, continue to sim mer it, uncovered. Add the green onions, parsley and lemon juice. Cover and cook for 15 minutes. Add the shrimp and crabmeat to the pot and mix well; cook for 2 minutes more. Cover and turn off the heat. Let it sit for at least 15 minutes more to continue cooking the seafood. The gumbo will stay hot for a long time. Remove and discard the bay leaves. Taste and adjust the seasonings; serve over cooked white rice with French bread and butter.
LULU’S CRAZY CREOLA SEASONING Makes ½ cup (From Gumbo Love: Recipes for Gulf Coast Cooking, Entertaining, and Savoring the Good Life by Lucy Buffett) WHAT YOU WILL NEED: 1 tablespoon sea salt 2 tablespoons granulated garlic or garlic powder 4 teaspoons granulated onion or onion powder ¼ cup paprika 1½ teaspoons freshly ground black pepper 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper 2 teaspoons white pepper ½ teaspoon dried thyme ½ teaspoon dried oregano HOW TO PREP: Combine all ingredients and store in an airtight container. As to tomatoes in gumbo, in the part of South Louisiana where I am from, we never did have any. I came to work at Commander’s Palace in the early ’70s, and the first thing I ate was a seafood okra gumbo, and it had tomatoes in it. I called my mother up, and I said, “Mom, they have tomatoes in there, and she said, ‘Don’t eat it.’” But then I had to call her on it. I said, “You know, Mom, when you put up okra during the summer? You cook it with tomatoes. She said, ‘That doesn’t count.’” And so I really started looking at the gumbos in New Orleans at the time. It was kinda the time Paul Prudhomme came on the scene with seafood okra gumbo. And they did have a little bit of tomato in the product. Not a lot; it certainly wasn’t red. It was brownish-red or sienna colored, and it didn’t have a pronounced flavor of tomato. And I personally have gotten to like it with a little dash in there, because I think it adds a lot of flavor and color.
– Marcelle Bienvenu, Louisiana’s Culinary Heritages Round Table, a conversation held at The Historic New Orleans Collection, November 3, 2018.
SWEET POTATO SALAD ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Sweet potato salad is a variation on potato salad — just a little bit sweeter. The sweetness complements the spicy flavor of the gumbo, while still adding richness. Get the recipe online at www.rouses.com. In the toe of Louisiana’s boot, where the overflow of the Mississippi regularly enriches the soil, tomatoes grow into wondrous, mineral-tasting red globes of taste perfection. They can be ugly, but they always taste delicious. And when they are available, they should be used to enhance everything. That means, yes, even in gumbo and jambalaya. When shrimp and crabs are running, okra is fresh and crisp, and tomatoes are just waiting to be picked. They belong together. They are ready together. The blending of the slightly acidic but sweet tomatoes, the vegetal okra and the wonderful seafood is dictated by nature. This is the very definition of the terroir of New Orleans. – Liz Williams, founder, Southern Food and Beverage Museum
ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Chef Justin Girouard, owner of The French Press, an upscale bistro in Lafayette, serves a Cajun Benedict. In a local twist on the classic Eggs Benedict, the Lafayette native — a James Beard Foundation nominee — replaces Canadian bacon and hollandaise with boudin and gumbo.
GRISHAM’S GUMBO ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Mary Mahoney’s Old French House in Biloxi serves classic Gulf Coast cuisine and seafood gumbo made from a recipe that goes back more than 40 years. Even John Grisham is a fan. The author has featured the restaurant’s gumbo in two of his novels. Mahoney’s sends Grisham gumbo every December. You too can get a shipment — Mahoney’s famous seafood gumbo is available for shipping on the restaurant’s website.
GUMBO FOR BREAKFAST
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There comes a time in a young cook’s life when they need to have The Talk. You’ve got questions about a confusing, complicated world. You’ve seen just enough of life to know that, oftentimes, things aren’t what they seem. In one critical area of culinary life, you need answers. “Mama, how do you make gumbo?”
By P. Johnson
The conversation that followed — The Gumbo Talk — was the beginning of a journey, the start of a Gulf Coast culinary education that has taught me a lot about tradition, culture, geography, family history and a world of flavors. It was my chapter of a South Louisiana birthright, and my connection to generations of cooks who developed a wildly varied food group united under a single name: gumbo.
When I told her that, Mama took a second, shook her head, and then blew my mind.“I’ve never made that one. My mama only made shrimp and okra gumbo, and there’s a reason why…”
M y mother took a deep breath, exhaled…then smiled a bit. “Depends on what kind of gumbo you want to make, sweetie.”“Chicken and sausage.”
If you want to cook gumbo, you need to start somewhere, and in the days before easy internet searches and 24-hour food channels, your best option was also the simplest: Go ask your mama. At the time, I was in my early 20s and had lived outside Louisiana for a few years — college in Texas, a few years loosely based in California — and wanted to re-create the more comforting, yet complicated, dishes of my youth. I’d never stirred a roux, never set a pot to simmer for hours, never dallied with large-format Louisiana foods. When you live in Louisiana, gumbo just tends to happen to you. When you live away, you need to make gumbos happen. I was ready. I knew the style that I wanted: a solid roux-thickened chicken and sausage gumbo, the workaday variation so common to our part of Cajun country. We lived in the small bayou city of New Iberia, a short hop away from the Gulf’s rich recre ational fisheries and the cattle-friendly rice country of the coastal prairie. Always an enthusiastic eater, I’d had plenty of different incarnations of the sainted dish growing up, and being the curious type, I always tried to identify different flavors and ingredients as I went. Okra was always easy to spot, as were the different wholeanimal seafoods (crab, shrimp, but never crawfish). I could recognize the tang of filé powder on the tongue and the silky dankness of a well-made roux. I scarfed up bowls at friends’ houses and cold-weather family celebrations, and even went back for second helpings on days when our public school cafeteria featured gumbo on the lunchtime menu. I had decided that my personal starting point would be a classic: savory chicken and smoked sausage with a medium-dark roux. And my mother would pass along the Wisdom of My People, and I would under stand the world. The story that shattered my world was a tale about her mother’s gumbo and her accompanying aversion to roux cooking. It goes like this: When my grandmother Lorelle — a North Louisiana girl from Catahoula Parish — was a young bride (sometime in the late 1930s/ early 1940s), she was learning to cook for her new husband, an Hebert boy raised in Shreveport with deep roots in South Louisi ana’s Assumption and Iberville parishes. She tried to make a gumbo in the South Louisiana style — dark roux, deep flavors — but in her first attempt scorched the roux and gave the final dish a bitter, burnt flavor. The gumbo was barely edible, but not wanting to waste food, she served it anyway. My grandmother (we called her Mamma) was 23 Ingredients and Me
so humiliated, she never made another roux, choosing instead to develop her signature version: shrimp and okra gumbo. No roux = no danger of bitterness. This simple gumbo is the one she served her family and passed on to her daughters and other family cooks. For diners at her table, “gumbo” meant a very specific combination of flavors that are synonymous with Louisiana summertime — chewy sliced okra fresh from a neighbor’s garden, plump shrimp recently pulled from the nets, a fresh tomato if they’re ready and a can of RoTel if they’re not. She cooked it often, and people loved “Lorelle’s gumbo.”
The official version is as follows: SHRIMP OKRA OR CHICKEN OKRA GUMBO Sauté 2 pounds of okra with 1-2 chopped onions, chopped celery (2-3 ribs) and green onions, and one big fresh tomato (or a can of tomatoes). Also add one or two cloves minced or pressed garlic. Cook until it stops roping (being slimy) and the onions are tender. For oneaddgumbo,shrimptotwo pounds of peeled shrimp, and enough water or chicken stock to make it soupy. Season with salt, pepper and Tony Chachere’s, and cook at least an hour. It will be even better the next day. For chicken gumbo: Follow the same instructions, except precook the chicken by boiling or sautéing it. You can either leave it on the bones or pick the meat off. Add the sautéed mixture of vegetables to boiled chicken stock and season to taste. Better yet: Use both chicken and shrimp for a really meaty gumbo. Serve over rice. And as much as I love the story, I love this description even more. Partly because it’s more of a sketch or a process document than a traditional recipe. If you knew Mamma, you can hear her voice in the practical yet vague directions. You’ve got a few ingre dients, a couple of tips and a whole lot of wiggle room when it comes to proportions, timing and just about everything else. (Got shrimp? Great. Chicken instead? That’ll work.)And of course, my favorite near-universal punchline of Louisiana cooking: “Serve over rice.” (As if you had to tell us.)
That was Mamma’s gumbo, the one on which my mother was raised, and the dish she passed along to the next generation. But since I wanted to learn a different style — I wanted to feed gumbo to a lot of people in Texas, and couldn’t afford inland seafood prices— I went the “roux and poultry” route, seeking counsel and knowledge from a highschool co-worker from outside Abbeville. “My” gumbo started out as Mike Vidallier’s gumbo, which he got from his grandmother. In a way, I chose a different fork in the road, and another edible family history.
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The next phase of research was, in truth, both something I would do anyway and pure joy. Over the course of a few days, I spent hours on the phone talking to my mother’s remaining sisters — Lula, Barbara Rose and of course Noel — talking about gumbo, family updates and the state of the world.Itold them the “burnt roux” story and asked if they’d ever heard it. None had, but the consensus seemed to be that it sounded a lot like her. (There was a great story about Mamma baking a pie so bad that she buried it in the backyardrather
I’ve always loved Mamma’s story for its million different delicious layers: a portrait of my grandmother as a nervous young cook, her “never again” kitchen trauma response and, in a larger sense, how an important dish can define a cook’s identity. In the moment, it was a significant hit to my world view. In my mind, my grandmother had culinary magical powers, yet she couldn’t make this founda tional dish? I needed to get some air. It was like being told I was adopted, or getting the results of a very surprising genetic test (23beans & Me, perhaps?). Fast-forward about 30 years and, once again, I was thinking about home-cooking culture, family tales and gumbo. I spent decades writing about food and cooking culture in and around New Orleans — using all my “hungry and curious” skills to eat and understand how restaurants work. I’ve eaten a million different gumbo styles, and always ask the cook or waitstaff the same key question: “How do you make your gumbo?” I’ve talked gumbo with the venerable Leah Chase (“Some people make that Creole gumbo and it’s like a religion”) and the late, great Paul Prudhomme. I’ve eaten and discussed gumbo with so many of the chefs that defined the dish in New Orleans’ food scene over the decades. For example, Donald Link’s early signature style — dark roux, chicken, tasso, andouille — made its way onto other menus around town as cooks learned and then carried it with them to the next gig. I learned about wintertime “duck camp” gumbos with juicy oysters and occasional bird shot. I dedicated my own cooking practice to a Thanksgiving ritual — rich turkey-bone gumbo. I loved gumbo as a culinary institution, a widely varied food group and a never-ending source of impas sioned kitchen stories (“Now let me tell you how I make it…” ).
But I kept going back to that story — that burnt roux tale — as a touchstone, but one that I’ve never heard since my mother explained the gap in her cooking education. I’ve told it for years to explain why I don’t use seafood, thicken with okra or put tomatoes in my pot. However, I realized that I was the only one in my family who remembered the story since my mother passed away in 1995. I wanted to dig a bit deeper, so I went to our family’s living archives — a living cookbook maintained by my mama’s youngest sister Noel and the firsthand memories of Mama’s siblings.Thefirst part was simple enough: Noel’s keen organizational and preservation skills made finding the “recipe” easy enough (a huge advantage of being from a family shot through with librarians).
My editor asked me to write about my opinion of okra, as I’ve done previously in these pages for pineapple on pizza (favorable), waffles versus pancakes (pancakes — I mean, come on), and ranch dressing as dipping sauce (the headline for that one was Not to Judge, but People Who Put Ranch Dressing on Their Pizza Are a Disgrace to Humanity ; I disapprove of the practice). Reader, I have no problem sharing my (accurate) opinions about food. S till, picking on okra seemed… well, it just seemed wrong. Those first bites of okra are blandly bitter if you’re lucky. It’s slimy. Every good recipe for okra is a fanciful guide to helping you make okra taste and feel like something that isn’t okra. When somebody tells me they like okra, I smile wanly and wonder what else is wrong with them. Here is something else you might not know about okra: No one knows where it came from. In the South, we know it locally as a thickening agent used when preparing gumbo (indeed, the word gumbo is likely a derivative of the word for okra in various African dialects), and it certainly arrived on American shores by way of the trans atlantic slave trade. But whether it was first cultivated in West Africa, East Africa or South Asia is unclear. What we do know is that, over the centuries, it has crossed the Sahara, leaped across the Atlantic and Pacific, and been enjoyed by sultans, presidents and grand viziers alike. Okra is present in the etchings in Egyptian tombs and in the writings of Thomas Jefferson. During the Middle Ages in the Arab world, okra was believed to hold therapeutic powers as an aphrodi siac. (Its chemistry backs this up, as it is rich in magnesium, zinc, iron, folic acid and vitamin B.) It was also used internally to prevent pregnancies, making its role in reproduction oddly thorough. During the Civil War, the coffee trade with South America was badly disrupted, leaving Confederate soldiers hurting for a fix of morning sludge. Not to worry, though, because okra, which thrives in warm Southern climes, could be grown, dried, ground and brewed for an adequate coffee substitute. Is there nothing it can’t do?But wait, there’s more! Since okra made its way back and forth across the map centuries before the discovery of America, the pointy green fruit has slimed its way across every kind of cuisine you can think of.I’d give you a gumbo recipe, but even I know better than to offer an opinion about that to a Southern audience; one wrong ingredient and you’d set my car on fire.
PHOTO BY ROMNEY CARUSO
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than let anyone eat it.) When it came to roux, each sister gave a variation on “She never made them. She just didn’t have the patience.” So, pretty on brand, in the parlance of our times.After laughing a bit, we moved on to the prime question: “How do you make your gumbo?” and the stories continued. Barbara makes gumbo in Colorado for friends and special occasions. Noel can’t make her mother’s recipe because her family hates okra. Luckily, Lula (who lives nearby) will always put a quart in the freezer for her baby sister. (“I love her for that.”) We move on to grandkid talk and whatever jokes come to mind. But after we hang up, I think we’re all thinking about our family traditions, the folks that taught us, and when we’re making the next pot. We can get older and keep cooking, but The Gumbo Talk continues. Good, Bad or Just Medi-Okra By David W. Brown
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Roux Dat By David W. Brown
The takeaway is that by 2008, Gumbo was back, and Sir Saint with him, and with their powers combined, the two helped the Saints win Super Bowl XLIV in 2010. If you haven’t been to a Saints game, you might have still seen Gumbo out and about at various fundraisers, community events and parties. He and Sir Saint attend about 150 events per year, not counting football games, because what’s the point of living on the Gulf Coast if you aren’t going to keep a busy social calendar? Gumbo is here, and he’s here to stay. And where Gumbo goes, joy — and home game wins — are sure to follow.
Gumbo was a St. Bernard puppy, a breed chosen because St. Bernard Parish is adjacent to Orleans Parish just to the east. The name “Gumbo” was chosen in a contest. Out of 3,000 entries, Gumbo was the obvious choice in a city that knows and loves its local cuisine.
Gumbo, who was once on four legs and is now on two, was a gift from the Louisiana Restaurant Association on September 12, 1967. During a team luncheon at the Jung Hotel five days before the premiere season opener, association representatives presented Saints players, coaches, and minority owner Al Hirt with a six-month-old, 75-pound Gumbo. Hirt, the famed musician, welcomed Gumbo with a rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” which he played on the trumpet.
More than that, as the Saints point out, gumbo is “a famous traditional Cajun meal loved by young and old, rich and poor (a mix like all people who love and support the Saints).”
The larger-than-life Gumbo even had his own dog around this time — Fetch Monster, an Australian shepherd who would run out on the field and fetch tees after kicks. In 2000, Fetch Monster left and Gumbo took a break, and a new mascot named Mambo joined the party. Mambo is a…well, I don’t know what Mambo is. A Muppet-like court jester. He wasn’t as terrifying as King Cake Baby would one day be, but he didn’t last long, either: The people wanted Gumbo. (Mambo changed his name to Mojo and became the mascot of the New Orleans VooDoo until the team’s dissolution in 2015.)
Sir Saint, the team’s other mascot, had been with the team from the start, but made his first sideline appearance in 2008. If you can’t tell the two apart, note that Gumbo wears a jersey with a double zero on it. Sir Saint is the one in the helmet, and he wears number one. Also, Gumbo is a dog. I asked Gumbo about this — why he gets zeroes and Sir Saint gets a one — and he seemed pleased with the situation, responding, “Woof, rrrrwoof WOOF. WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF. Woof. Arf.” (Sir Saint did not respond to a request for comment, and why would he? He’s number one.) In the mid-1980s, Gumbo vanished from the sidelines. He was replaced in media by Huddles, a Ziggy-like cartoon football player. Then, in 1991, Seth Green — yes, that one — was even the unofficial mascot for a while. (Cha-ching!) But by the late 1990s, Gumbo was back and better than ever. This time, Gumbo was bipedal and with a head conspicuously larger than his body. Indeed, he had grown to superhuman (and superdog) size.
T he best animal to goose a crowd is always a dog, and since the first game of the first season of the New Orleans Saints, Gumbo has been there, somewhere near the end zone, cheering the home team and growling at our rivals.
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GUMBO ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT That’s me at the 1978 Children’s Hospital fundraiser with Gumbo, the Saints’ canine mascot. All the kiddies lined up to get their pictures taken with the gigantic drooling pup. At age 19 I was a bit long in the tooth compared to the other kids, but I too wanted my keepsake with Gumbo so, emboldened by a few draft beers (hey, the drinking age in 1978 was still 18) and the prodding of friends, I memorialized this moment.
– Donny Rouse, CEO, 3rd Generation SAINTS FANS ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT We Saints fans are some of the most passionate and proud sports fans in the country. As part our renewed partnership with the New Orleans Saints, we have on-field fan features, including the Tunnel Team experience, in which fans are selected to participate in the tunnel experience before each home game, and Kick-Off Kid experience, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a junior tee retriever. And our stores are decked out for the season.
We are doing more than just partnering with the Saints on the field. We have established a new initiative called Tackle Hunger to help those in need throughout the season. Saints alumni, Saints mascots and the Saints cheer krewe will travel to Rouses Markets around the Gulf Coast to collect nonperishable food and donations in person (follow us on social media to see which stores and when). But you don’t have to wait for the Tackle Hunger team to donate; we encourage you to donate nonperishable food in Tackle Hunger bins and cash at checkouts at any Rouses Market. The food and money raised goes directly back into the community, supplying local food banks, food pantries and community refrigerators in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
– Patti Stallard, Copy Editor for Rouses Magazine SHOPPA STYLE! ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Order convenient curbside pickup at orderonline.rouses.com, or with the Rouses Markets app. Place your order, choose your curbside pickup time, and your Rouses Markets personal Shoppa will shop your order for you, and load your groceries into your car. Curbside pickup is free on orders $35 or more, and you pay the same price for groceries curbside as in store.
Jumbo Gumbo
By David W. Brown A s with all great legends, the details of the Gumbotron’s origins are obscured in the mists of time, but what we know for sure is this: It began with two friends and some beer. Alfredo Nogueira, the executive chef of VALS and Cure, both on Freret Street in New Orleans, and Cane & Table on Decatur Street in the French Quarter (not to imply that the French Quarter isn’t part of New Orleans…), was talking to his friend Charlie Schott, the beverage director for Parson’s Chicken and Fish, a theme restaurant of the Land and Sea Dept., a concept development firm in Chicago, about Saints football and the jumbotron, when one asked the other, simply: “Why isn’t it called the Gumbotron?”
Gumbotron isn’t an official and imposed name by the Saints or the NFL, but who cares? A concept like this is just the sort of fun that Saints fans expect. Anyone else remember the Buddy D. Parade? Or when Seth Green — yes, that Seth Green — was made the unofficial mascot in the early 1990s? (Cha-ching!) And Saints fans have a lot of experience naming things after gumbo. Just ask the team’s beloved, furry mascot. What is his name? Of course it’s Gumbo, and guess who named him. You did, in a contest in 1967.
Every stadium has a jumbotron of some sort. It is the giant scoreboard the crowd turns to for replays and close-ups. At the Superdome, the two end zone boards that loom over the maximum capacity crowd are among the longest in the National Football League —they are longer, in fact, than the football field itself. The panels are 333 feet wide and 38 feet tall, in glorious high defini tion. They were installed in 2016, part of a $40 million upgrade to the stadium and the adjacent Smoothie King Center. Calling it the Gumbotron made perfect sense. Gumbo is the name of one of the two mascots of the New Orleans Saints — the cherubic, masked St. Bernard character (though, long ago, Gumbo was an actual St. Bernard dog who terrorized visiting teams — he was a gift from the Louisiana Restaurant Association before the very first regular season game of the Saints in 1967). Moreover, gumbo is the official state cuisine of Louisiana — officially since 2004, but unofficially for centuries. It is a dish that unites the entire Gulf Coast. Even the melting pot culture of the state has often been described as a gumbo. As if that weren’t enough: For many, gumbo is synonymous with family. Every family has its own spin on the regional cuisine, and everyone’s mom makes the best gumbo you’ve ever had. A few weeks after the term was coined, Fredo’s brother, WDSU media specialist Juan Nogueira, mentioned it to someone at Rouses Markets. Marcy Nathan, Rouses creative director, vowed to make it a reality. The timing was perfect. Donny Rouse, the CEO of Rouses Markets, was already working with Gayle Benson to once again make Rouses the official supermarket of the New Orleans Saints (the partnership had been paused when the stores had to focus all their energies on keeping the shelves stocked during COVID). The magazine team was already working on this issue, which was appropriately themed around gumbo. It was a no-brainer, and practically preordained! And it meant a lot to the Rouses team. Part of it is that Rouses means local. It’s one thing for a national chain to put up billboards for whatever city’s sports team it happens to have a store near. But Rouses Markets was born in Louisiana, and over the last 60+ years has expanded across the Gulf Coast. It is now part of communities in Mississippi and Alabama too, where Saints fans are legion. Rouses country has always been, and always will be, Saints country.
When Bobby “Cajun Cannon” Hebert, former New Orleans Saints quarterback, founder of the Who Dat Nation, and host of Sports Talk on WWL (the flagship station of the New Orleans Saints), first heard about it, he understood immediately why the community would not only embrace the term, but keep it going. “This is pure Gulf Coast,” he said. “You couldn’t have a Gumbotron in Minnesota. It wouldn’t make sense for Carolina. The bottom line is: Whether you are Cajun or Creole, whether you are from Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama, gumbo is in your DNA, just like the Saints are. Everyone else can have their jumbotron. The Who Dat Nation? We’ll take our Gumbotron. It’s unique, just like us.”
IN THE ZONE FOR EVERY GAME? CREATE YOUR ULTIMATE FAN CARTOON pxT:1920
