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1 lg Green Pepper, chopped
1 lg Spanish Onion, chopped
3 Stalks celery, sliced
2 lb Okra, 1/2" slices
1 bn Green Onions, chopped
1 lg Tomato, chopped, peeled &
- seeded
1 1/2 lb Shrimp (20ct), save shells
1 pt Oysters, small, save juice
1 lb Scallops
2 chicken breasts, boned
1 lb Andouille or smoked sausage
1 t Tabasco sauce
1 tb worcestershire sauce
6 Cloves garlic, minced
8 oz butter (two sticks)
8 oz flour (one cup)
1/2 ts Dried thyme leaves
1 Bottle Doxee's Clam Juice
2 c Uncooked parboilled rice
- use Uncle Ben's converted
1/2 ts Dried Oregano leaves
2 Bay leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
A little MSG
4 c chicken stock (about)
Fry pan or deep pot, IRON
This is an authentic family recipe that my mother
taught me in 1950 in New Orleans. It makes a great
dinner party main dish. Like chinese food, it is long
on chopping and assembling, but goes together and
cooks rather quickly.
Shrimp - First peel shrimp, keep chilled, save shells.
Put shells in small pot, cover with water, bring to a
boil, then reduce to a simmer for 15 minutes. When
water has been reduced by about half, remove from
heat, cool, and strain out shells. Reserve water.
chicken and sausage - Chop sausage and chicken into
medium bite-sized pieces, brown in fry pan, drain, set
aside.
Okra - Cut off stems and tips, slice into 1/2" pieces.
Set aside.
Prepare garlic, Spanish onions, green onions, celery,
set aside separately.
roux - Melt butter in a large IRON pan or deep pot,
add flour. Stir constantly over low heat until flour
is cooked, starting to lightly brown. Care is needed
here because from cooked to burned is a short but
tragic step, but you can start over. After light
brown, the color is all politics, it tastes good.
Once the roux is cooked, stir in garlic and celery.
Turn up heat a bit, say about medium, but stir
constantially to prevent roux from burning. After
about 1-2 minutes, dump in chopped Spanish onions and
green pepper, continue stirring. After another minute
or so of cooking and stiring, dump in the okra. By
this time the roux appears to have disappeared, but is
still there, clinging to the vegetables. Continue
cooking for another 2-3 minutes till the okra starts
to wilt and become shiny. (If you are using an iron
fry pan, rather than a pot, you will now be running
out of space and will need to now transfer the
ingredients to a larger pot to continue.)
Stir in the chicken and sausage pieces. After another
minute, mix in shrimp water, the oyster juice, the
bottle of Doxee's Clam Juice (THIS IS THE SECRET TO
THE NOLA FLAVOR!), and enough chicken stock to cover
the ingredients by an inch or so. Add bay leaves,
Tabasco and worcestershire sauces, spices, salt and
pepper. Slowly bring to a boil (over a period of five
minutes or more), stirring frequently. As soon as the
mixture boils, immediately remove from heat and cover.
After five minutes, remove cover, add tomato, oysters,
scallops and shrimp. Give a few more stirs, re-cover,
and wait for 20 minutes. The declining heat from the
mixture will cook, but not overcook, the seafood. From
this point, this mixture should never be brought to
the boil again. Now is a good time to make the rice.
Check for thickness. If too thick, thin out with
additional chicken stock. If too thin, add file' in a
separate serving bowl before adding to rice. Once
file' is added to gumbo, do not re-heat, as this will
cause stringiness. Just before serving, mix in the
chopped green onions. They should be only slightly
cooked, a little wilted but also a little crunchy.
Serve in soup platter, with an island of white rice
surrounded by a green moat of gumbo, meat and seafood.
Serve with split buttered and broiled French bread,
and white wine or beer.
This is an expensive dish to fix, and there should be
no left-overs. If there are, then use up promptly,
because of the seafood content. *
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