As the winter is really getting snowy and chilly, I felt like warming up with a New Orleans style seafood gumbo. Not knowing any local locations for getting this delicious dish, I was compelled to learn how to make it. I spent some time looking online for a good recipie and settled with this one. Even this, however, was a tricky endeavor in Michigan.
My first problem was that some of the ingredients were foreign to me. I had absolutely no idea what to look for when searching for okra, other than the produce section. I actually had a dream the night before hitting the market that it resembled a white potato that was shaped like a large radish. Strange. Imagine my surprise when I found such an adorable and appealing green vegetable. Furthermore the idea of a roux and fish stock were not well known to my Michigander cooking skills. I had planned on actually making a fish stock from another recipe; however, my mom said she wouldn’t have any thing to do with my culinary delight if there was any fish heads in the cooking.
Consequently no fish stock was used in the making of this gumbo (I am still a bit sad about this). My one complaint for this recipe was the instructions on creating a roux, I didn’t know how to do this and searched around for instructions which led me astray. According to the instructions, I should have worked on this process for an hour, which created a nasty black substance that I had no idea was wrong until my dad laughed at it. Apparently this should only take 10-20 minutes and it should be a tan to mahogany color, not black. I should have stopped when it looked like this:
Back to the okra, it’s beautiful! In the instructions it says to cook it 10 minutes, but what you are looking for is for it to stop stringing. I had no idea what this meant, but a magical thing happened while I was cooking. At first the okra was sort of slimy and sticking together while I stirred, when it was done, it stopped misbehaving and each piece embraced its cut apart being (no more stringing).
The most time intensive part of my gumbo journey was in the meticulous crab cracking. I needed to pull the crab meat out of king crab legs to get real crab meat. There were zero options for whole crabs or any form of crab meat that was already taken from its shells. I actually like this buisness, but it was particularly difficult not to eat the crab meat during the process.
So the gumbo tasted delicious despite the Michigan handicap. I can’t wait to make it again and this time I’ll know how to shop for the ingredients and how to make a roux!
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