Okra is in season, and Liz brought a pound of it home from the Wednesday, Durham Farmers’ Market. It was pretty much gifted to me - you know, in a “here you go, have fun” sort of way. It was a pleasant surprise because my five okra plants are struggling to say the least. My first instinct was to fry it. All of it. I could see it like it was real. Me sitting on the couch, in front of a movie with a pound of fried okra, eating it like popcorn. Ridiculous, I know. On to plan B: gumbo.
After
much research I discovered two things. 1) Making good gumbo is time consuming.
2) People are VERY particular about their gumbo recipes. At first I was
intimidated by the amount of ingredients that I found in the gumbo recipes.
However, after I made my grocery list it was obvious that I was leaning into
it. M’lady was kind enough to take the pictures above, as I was elbow deep in
nearly 30 different ingredients.
I decided to make a roux and use it, as
well as the okra, as the thickener. It was oddly enjoyable to take what would
normally be a base for white gravy to the next level. A rich, brown level that
would only appear after 40 minutes of careful attention. The roux was only the
beginning of the tedious process. Good thing good music (unfortunately, I had
no Zydeco) was ingredient number 24.
At
11:30 am I started prepping the ingredients. At 6:30 pm we ate gumbo.
This
all led me to two conclusions. 1) Saturday is a good day to make gumbo. You
know, have some Abita and make an afternoon of it. 2) It is hard to go wrong
with a recipe if everyone disagrees with one another on what ingredients should
or should not be included. I chose to add andouille sausage, crab meat and
shrimp among many, many other things.
It
boils down this way, it is either great or its not. Though, I had little to no
basis for what gumbo is supposed to taste like, I‘m pretty sure it turned out
quite well - for a bastardized, do-what-you-will recipe. Love and time were the
common denominators of all of the recipes that I researched. Lots and lots of time
love. I think that is what makes it so good. Well, that and a little bit of
fried okra as a garnish.
