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Gumbos of Okra
If you live South, West or South-West where tender young okra pods make soups and stews gummy and yummy you'll know all about gumbos, which are almost anything thickened with okra-and they're specially fine when a spoonful of that Indian filé is stirred in at the finish. (Filé is the sassafras powder you get in New Orleans, still ground up by the Indians, you'll find more about it under Bottled Sauces and Powder Tins.) The smaller the okra the more tender. Use very small pods whole and cut others crosswise in 1/2 inch hunks. Okra takes only about 20 minutes to cook, and when you add it, for instance, to chicken soup with onions tossed in fat a couple minutes, chopped peppers and tomatoes, you get chicken okra. For beef gumbo substitute beef. Crabmeat, shrimp and oysters cooked in soup stock with okra and tomatoes make famous gumbos. Add a cup of sweet corn to the okra-onion-pepper-tomato mix after you cook it 10 minutes, and you get a regulation Southern Gumbo that takes only another 10 minutes of cooking.
It doesn't take much gumption to make a gumbo.
A method rather than a fixed recipe: a pot of stock, aromatics, okra, and whatever protein is at hand. A few points keep it from going wrong.
- Filé goes in off the heatSassafras powder turns stringy and ropy the moment it boils. Pull the pot from the fire, let it stop bubbling, then stir in a spoonful — about 1 teaspoon per quart — or pass it at the table for each bowl.
- Oysters and shrimp are not soup ingredients for 20 minutesThe text has seafood "cooked in soup stock," which reads as a long simmer. Shrimp need 2–3 minutes and oysters barely 1–2, just until the edges ruffle. Build the gumbo with okra and tomato first, add shellfish at the very end. Crab shells and bodies can simmer for stock; picked crabmeat only needs warming through.
- Okra timingTwenty minutes is right for pods cut into half-inch pieces; whole small pods want about the same. Cooked much longer they go soft and break up. The acid in the tomatoes is often said to help keep the texture in check.
- Filé todayGround sassafras leaf is sold as "gumbo filé" in spice sections and by mail order, though it is easiest to find in the South; it no longer comes from the New Orleans Choctaw vendors the author describes. It is leaf only, not root bark, and is used in pinches.
- "Onions tossed in fat a couple minutes"Sweat the onion, and the pepper with it, in a few tablespoons of fat until soft — closer to 5–8 minutes over moderate heat than two. This is not a roux gumbo; okra and filé are doing the thickening.
- Quantities to work fromFor 4 servings: 2 quarts stock, 1 lb okra, 1 large onion, 1 bell pepper, 2 cups chopped tomatoes, and either 2 cups cooked chicken or beef, or 1 lb shellfish. Add the cup of corn as directed if you want the version he calls a regulation Southern gumbo.
- Camp conditionsOver a fire -- If you are cooking on coals, where heat is hard to lower, rake them aside before the filé stage and keep the seafood in reserve until the pot is off direct flame.