Rouses Magazine - The Gumbo Issue

Cookin’ on Hwy. 1

By Tim Acosta, Advertising & Marketing Director

“At midnight in the Quarter, or noon in Thibodaux, I will play for gumbo.”— Jimmy Buffett

Everyone 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. 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 chicken along with the smoked sausage in another pot, then add the pan drippings to 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 chops in your gumbo, and it would come out good.

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.