If no one will make cajun food for us, we'll just have to do it ourselves!

Given that we live in a town of about 70,000 people, I would say that Bloomington has a pretty impressive diversity of restaurants. Unfortunately, the diversity does not include a cajun place (no intention of dissing Dats here, which does indeed dish up a decent $5 plate of beans and rice, but we're looking for a bit more). The other night (in the middle of yet ANOTHER wintry snowy cold snap) we decided that the perfect pick-me-up would be a bowl of hot, spicy, thick, gumbo. That meant that we were set to be the ones to do the cooking.

Gumbo is one of those dishes that has countless variations, held together by a very few commonalities. The first has to do with the base--gumbo starts with a nice dark roux, which both flavors the soup and serves as one stage of thickening. What goes in it after that--sausage, chicken, squirrel, crawfish, shrimp, greens, is open to variation. The only expectation is that the flavors have time to meld together and are treated to one more stage of thickening, either with file or okra. The classic in our house consists of andouille sausage, chicken (thighs are best here), and shrimp. Okra gets tossed in depending on whether or not we happen to have it (this round missed out, because the okra in our freezer had apparently been there for quite some time, and had shrunk to such an extent that they resembled green beans).

The roux is the first, most important part. You combine flour and some kind of fat--we typically use a clear oil, like canola, and cook over medium heat FOREVER until you're SURE that it is about to burn. It turns out that I should never be allowed to be in charge of the roux, because I would have taken it off the heat about five minutes before we actually DID, and I would have been wrong, wrong, wrong. The deeper the color of your roux, the richer, more roasty, the flavor, so cook it as long as you can stand it.

Then you add your veggies--our gumbo gets lots of onions, green peppers, and garlic, and cook that until you have a nice mass of veggie glue. Add your chicken (cut into bits) and give everything a chance to brown. Add your broth, and cook for about 30 minutes, until everything is softened and coming together. If you are using okra, now is the time to put it in, to give it a head start for about 5 minutes or so. Then add the (prebrowned) andouille, and the shrimp. Just cook until shrmip are cooked through--no one likes a rubbery shrimp.

The final piece is the file. File comes from dried and ground sassafrass leaves, and has quite a distinctive odor. It adds a slight flavor to the stew, but nothing distinctive. It helps to thicken your gumbo, but it does not like to be exposed to very high heat, or your nice thickening breaks and gets a bit stringy. Yuck. So what we do is add the file at the end of the cooking--when everything is done. Turn off the heat, add 1-2 tablespoons file, stir well to combine, put the lid on, and walk away. Leave it for about 5 minutes or so, and you are ready to enjoy.