It would be insensitive of me if I didn’t pause and mention the fire disasters on Maui. My heart goes out to all the families, businesses and people who have suffered losses. Each day brings more sad news. Keep the faith and hope for better days ahead. My deepest sympathies and condolences to all the families who lost loved ones.
I have never been to New Orleans, so I have never eaten a gumbo there. I have eaten gumbo in restaurants and even from chefs who come from there.
As a consultant, I do what they ask of me, so I attempted my first gumbo recently. When I eat a dish in the country it comes from, it gives me a point of reference; this time, I didn’t have one. Sometimes making a new dish comes out better if I don’t have any prior experience with it; sometimes not.
What is the difference between Cajun and Creole gumbo? What started out as making a chicken and andouille sausage gumbo turned into a history lesson. From researching the word Cajun, I found that they dropped the A and it became a sort of shortcut word for Acadians, a people from Acadia in the northern east coast of North America. If this word were in Hawaii, our pidgin English shortcuts might have done the same. These French settlers from Nova Scotia arrived in Louisiana centuries ago and there they met American Indians, the Germans, Spanish, Canadians and Africans. This melting pot of cultures brought many food ingredients and cooking styles together, and they evolved.
The Africans brought rice and okra, among other things. The famous jambalaya is a rice dish that is the Louisiana offspring of African jollof rice. The Spanish brought paella, peppers, onions and tomatoes. The French brought the roux, sauce and sausage making. A lot of Louisianans fought in the Mexican war, bringing back chile peppers. Every culture brings the food from their homeland, ingredients, techniques, styles and flavors. The plantation immigrants in Hawaii back in the day did the same to the culinary scene here.
I started the gumbo by making a slow-cooked 30-minute dark brown roux.
I used what they call the “trinity” of vegetables: onions, celery and bell peppers. Add chicken stock, chicken thigh pieces and cut-up andouille sausage, Cajun spice, and sliced okra. It turned out like a hearty stew, so I poured the gumbo over rice. My biggest takeaway from making this was about what the okra did to the stew, not only thickening it, but giving it that slimy texture, in a good way.
I love to eat Japanese natto, so that slimy “neba neba” texture was very familiar to me. It reminded me also of the Egyptian dish “molokhia” that I ate last year. This is a plant-based dish using jute mallow, similar to the Filipino saluyot.
I’ve learned and seen a lot of cultures eat rice with soup, or with something gravy-like to make the rice go down easier. Especially for the poor, rice was the center of the plate. The most important thing is to fill your belly with something hot.
As you can see, I got more out of it than just making a gumbo. It’s like traveling, you get to be immersed in the place you are visiting for that brief moment that you are there. The longer you stay, the more you discover.
I love culinary anthropology and the stories they tell. Louisiana developed a unique new cuisine because of the many cultural contributions each ethnicity brought. Hawaii shares a similar story.
The word “new” suggests that there is an old; history to learn from, perhaps. When we honor the past and present, the future has a base to springboard from.
I think I want to visit New Orleans now.
Chef and restaurateur Alan Wong has wowed diners around the world for decades, and is known as one of the founders of Hawaii Regional Cuisine. Find his column in Crave every first Wednesday. Currently, Wong is dba Alan Wong’s Consulting Co.
