Gotta Gumbo
Stir up a big pot for family meal or a hungry crowd
Issue 52: From Dana
If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant—or watched the excellent portrayal of what it’s like to in The Bear—you know the highlight of your shift is family meal. After tackling your prep list and getting your station set up just right, and before jumping into the weeds of service for a few intense hours straight, there’s this calm and nourishing pause where everyone sits down together to eat a simple meal. You know, like family.
For 20 minutes or so, all the chaos of the kitchen quiets and its tightly held hierarchies disappear. The chef catches up with the dishwasher, servers gossip with line cooks, and then, just like that, family meal is over and everyone’s back in work mode.
The meal itself is always something simple that the sous chef (or someone they delegate to) can make in a big batch and serve family-style. It also has to be a versatile catch all for whatever ingredients needed to get used up: pastas, soups, rice dishes and such are go-tos.
But my favorite family meal, and the one I make for my own family and friends, especially when I’m cooking for a crowd, is gumbo. When I was working at Commander’s Palace, one of the best restaurants in New Orleans where Emeril Lagasse had been the chef just a few years prior to my getting there, family meal was often gumbo with shrimp, chicken, duck, crab, andouille, oysters or some combo thereof, always served with rice and a great big tangy salad. It was so good, probably because the ingredients they were working with were top notch and the cooks really knew what they were doing, but I think the recipe itself deserves the most credit.
Few dishes have been studied, celebrated and debated as much as gumbo. Entire books have been written about it, museum exhibits and panels have showcased it, documentaries are devoted to it. With roots in West Africa (“gumbo” takes its name from “gombo,” a Bantu word for okra, which is often added as a way to thicken the stew), it’s an amalgam of French, Creole, Cajun, Spanish, and Native American culinary influences.
There are as many ways to cook gumbo as there are opinionated cooks in Louisiana, so when we decided to teach it at The Dynamite Shop, we didn’t pay allegiance to any one way, instead focusing on the great lessons in the dish. There are the knife skills required to chop the celery, onions and bell peppers—what’s known as the “holy trinity” in Louisiana. There’s the process of cooking those ingredients down to build a strong foundation of flavor.
And then there’s making a roux, the French thickener made of roughly equal parts flour and fat, which you cook until it darkens to the color of milk chocolate, taking on a rich, nutty flavor. Then you add your stock so that the stew that holds together all those ingredients simmers into a smooth, slightly thick consistency.
When we made it in our afterschool program, we let the students decide what they wanted to put it in: some were camp sausage, others were team shrimp, and still others (including me) like to toss it all in.
Cheryl Smith, the chef of Cheryl’s Global Soul in Brooklyn, teaching our Dynamite kids how to make gumbo.
I make it a lot this time of year when the nights start to chill. I cook it for parties, and serve it with cornbread on the side and Bananas Foster for dessert. I bring it to friends who are feeling under the weather or blue.
This weekend, at the Oldtone Roots Music Festival in upstate New York (one of my favorite music events on the planet), I wandered into the musicians’ tent backstage to say hi to some friends who were performing. Dozens of fiddlers and banjo players were practicing and chatting and when a guy in an apron standing behind a makeshift outdoor kitchen yelled “Gumbo’s ready!” everyone put down their instruments and sat around to enjoy the meal.
And it made me think, no matter where you are, gumbo has a pretty magical way of bringing together family.
Gumbo
Serves 4-6
1 can (14 to 16 ounces) whole peeled tomatoes
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 large white onion, diced
1 tablespoon minced garlic (about 3 medium cloves)
1 rib celery, diced
1 red, yellow, or green bell pepper, diced
1 teaspoon Creole seasoning
1/4 cup all-purpose flour (or gluten-free substitute, such as Bob’s Red Mill 1:1)
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock,
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon filé powder (optional)
1 bay leaf
1 cup chopped okra (frozen is fine)
3/4 pound smoked sausage or kielbasa, sliced into coins
1/2 pound medium shrimp, peeled but tails left on
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
3 cups cooked white or brown rice, for serving
1. Pour the tomatoes into a large mixing bowl and use your clean hands to break them into small pieces and release their juices. Set aside.
2. In a large heavy-bottomed pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring until golden and translucent, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic, celery, bell pepper, and Creole seasoning and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the flour and mix well to combine with the oil and vegetables. Cook, stirring, until it’s the color of milk chocolate, 5 to 7 minutes. It’s fine for the roux to stick to the bottom of the pot, but don’t let it burn.
3. Whisk in the stock and scrape up any roux from the bottom of the pot. Add the crushed tomatoes, oregano, filé powder (if using), bay leaf, okra, and sausage. Simmer until the gumbo thickens, about 10 minutes, then add the shrimp and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes more, until the shrimp turn pink and the flavors meld. Season with salt and black pepper and serve in bowls over cooked brown rice.