Simmer Stock - Kitchen performing: First you take your roux...

First you take your roux...

In honor of the Patriots winning the Superbowl in New Orleans, tonight I made gumbo. The kids had chicken and shrimp gumbo while Francie and I had chicken and sausage.

OK, so the Pats won the big game two weeks ago. I actually planned on making gumbo then, but, sadly, I had to attend a funeral in Providence. I was inspired by Susannah who had e-mailed me several weeks ago asking if I knew of any place in the Boston area that carried filé powder (alas, I do not, so this gumbo, as well as I gather Jay's, was filéless). I was even further inspired (nah, more like determined) after stumbling across Chuck Taggart's The Gumbo Pages.

So, I did up a roux to a chocolate brown (equal parts oil to flour, stirring constantly in a cast iron skillet over medium heat), cut up me a chicken, some andouille and the Cajun trinity, and put it all (except the sausage for the first hour) in the pot with some stock. I more or less (as always, usually less, sometimes more) followed Mark Savoy's recipe, substituting chicken stock for the water but cutting back on the liquid by half (they must be big folk in the Savoy household: two gallons to serve six!). After a strong simmer for about an hour I put about a quart of gumbo into a different pot for the kids and added the sausage to ours. It cooked for about another hour, I added some chopped green onions and parsley (and shrimp to the girls') and it was "feeenee!"

Served over rice and some roasted sweet potatoes, it was mighty fine. Desert was white chocolate crème brulée. I'd go into that more, but I'm planning on doing up a whole crème brulée script sometime soon...

Update 3/18/2001

I've also done up Chuck's Gumbo du Monde. While more time consuming and a bit more costly than the Savoy recipe, it is truely the best gumbo I've ever tasted.

Posted on Feb 16, 2002 @ 07:35 PM