Pot Sticklers

By Marcelle Bienvenue

Few dishes are as recognizably regional as gumbo; everyone knows where it comes from, no matter where they live or even if they’ve ever had it. But unless you’re a local to gumbo country, you might not know how varied the gumbo options are. When I participate in conversations about gumbo, I always make it clear how I feel about Louisiana’s trademark dish: I am a purist.

I do not care to have seafood of any kind in my chicken and sausage gumbo. When making a wild duck gumbo, though, I like to add freshly shucked oysters to the pot a few minutes before serving; that was my father’s favorite gumbo, since he was an avid sportsman. In my seafood gumbo, no meat of any kind — just crabmeat, oysters and shrimp. This is not to say that I don’t sometimes enjoy a gumbo that has both meat and seafood in it. I strongly believe that there are no rules when it comes to gumbo — make it however you want to tickle your taste buds.

Now, let’s talk tomatoes. For my part, I strongly oppose adding tomatoes to a chicken and sausage (usually Andouille) gumbo. But, when I was working at Commander’s Palace in the 1970s, I noticed there were tomatoes in their seafood okra gumbo. The result wasn’t red, but was a brownish-red or sienna-colored, and it didn’t have a pronounced flavor of tomato. I called my mother and told her. Her reply? “Don’t eat it.” I reminded her that when she put up smothered okra during the summer months, she cooked it with diced tomatoes — homegrown or from the can. “That’s different,” she said.

Seafood okra gumbo was the favored option on restaurant menus of the day. Back then, and before Chef Paul Prudhomme arrived on the culinary scene in the Crescent City, I don’t think chicken and sausage gumbo was even available in a New Orleans restaurant.

The cut okra was added to the pot of seafood okra gumbo at Commander’s Palace, another departure from our standard seafood gumbo recipe in St. Martinville, which was made with smothered okra prepared during the okra season and frozen for later use in gumbos. Smothered okra is a thick concoction that usually contains diced tomatoes and is often served with shrimp or chicken over rice, and added to Cajun-style seafood gumbos.

Because I like to research, I checked out some recipes in some of my collection of Cajun and Creole cookbooks.

I began writing my food column, “Cooking Creole,” for The Times-Picayune in 1984, not long after Leon E. Sonia, Jr. passed away. I got a copy of his cookbook, La Bouche Creole, and used it often as a reference book. His version of chicken and sausage gumbo does not call for any tomato products, but his seafood gumbo has tomato paste and whole tomatoes. I noted that he doesn’t include okra in the latter recipe, but in his okra seafood gumbo, there are canned tomatoes and ham.

When I checked out River Road recipes, the chicken and okra gumbo does have ham and tomatoes. The shrimp gumbo has tomatoes, but no ham.

Creole Feast: 15 Master Chefs of New Orleans by Nathaniel Burton and Rudy Lombard, published in 1978, features chefs and cooks from New Orleans restaurants such as Broussard’s, The Caribbean Room, Dooky Chase, Chez Héléne, Corinne Dunbar’s and the Bon Ton.

Leah Chase’s Creole gumbo includes hardshell crabs, Creole hot sausage, smoked sausage, cubed beef, cubed smoked ham, chicken wings and shrimp. No tomatoes and no okra. Nathaniel Burton from Broussard’s made his okra gumbo with shrimp, okra and tomatoes.

Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Cooking features Cajun seafood gumbo with Andouille smoked sausage — no okra and no tomatoes. His seafood filé gumbo has tomato sauce, crab, oysters and shrimp. In his recipe for shrimp, okra and Andouille smoked sausage gumbo, he includes okra, peeled and chopped tomatoes, Andouille and shrimp.

So there you have it. There are many versions of all types of gumbos. As my good friend, the late Ella Brennan, explained to me while we sipped on Sazeracs, there are no rules for making gumbo, except one: It must be delicious.