USA 23 - New Orleans, Home of Gumbo!

You just can't leave New Orleans without eating Gumbo, or even Jambalaya for that matter - both were born and bred here, and both deserve to be experienced.

Luckily, in my New Orleans travels, I took a class at the New Orleans School of Cooking where our fearless Chef took us through both Gumbo and Jambalaya. Even luckier still, I was given a fabulous tip from Luke on Reception who pointed me in the direction of Coop's Place, a local bar and restaurant with FANTASTIC New Orleans home cooking.

Gumbo is a classic creole dish - creole was born from a mixture of French, Spanish, African and native American Indian influences, all blending together in this amazing city of New Orleans.

Gumbo is actually a soup, often served with rice, whereas Jambalaya is a stew with rice cooked in it.

Gumbo gets its name from the African word for okra, kingumbo. Okra is that long hairy vege, that is sort of slimy when you cook it, but it actually is a natural thickener. It's usually a key gumbo ingredient.

Another key ingredient is "file" (pronounced, fee-lay). This stuff is a green mysterious powder - it smells pungently musty and gives the gumbo it's dark green depth. File is simply ground Sassafras leaves, it was used by the South Louisiana Choctaw Indians for medicinal purposes, they brought it to the French Market to sell, and the locals picked it up and started using it as a seasoning and thickener to replace the okra when it was out of season! Cool, hey!

Then you have roux (pronounced roo). Roux is used as a base for a lot of creole and cajun cooking. It's simply the slow burning of flour, and gives flavour as well as thickening properties. There is a whole colour spectrum for your roux - depending on the dish eg. a blond roux (beige) is used for bisques, while a creole roux, for say gumbo, is a peanut butter colour, and cajun food uses a very dark roux. Gee, you guys learn a lot from me!

So, back to the gumbo. The rest of the gumbo is whatever is lying around, or in the early days, whatever you could catch or shoot! The classic dish now of course is the seafood gumbo, but I believe in the early days there was Alligator, Opossum, Snake, and even little bird gumbo - whatever you could get your hands on!! It was all simmered together with a heap of "the holy trinity" - onions, capsicum (bell peppers for the Americans), and celery, as well as their own special creole seasoning mix.

The gumbo we made at the cooking school had chicken and Andouille sausage (a spicy sausage) - the gumbo I ate at Coop's Place had bloody everything in it.

So, let's talk about Coop's.

Coop's Place is on Decatur Street, down near the French Market - it looks a bit dark and divey, but GO IN THERE AND EAT!!! They have two House Specialties - the Seafood Gumbo and the Jambalaya - I ordered a cup of both!

The Seafood Gumbo (dark green soup above) is "A creole stew served with rice. Prepared with dark brown roux, French Market vegetables, file powder, drum (fish) fillet, shrimp, oysters and crabclaws"....MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM....Oh my goodness...it was incredibly dark and mysteriously wonderful! So much flavour, not very hot, just lots and lots of flavour, and the silkiness of the okra was divine. I have just relooked at my notes I keep in my little food diary and it says "AMAZING, zingy, fishy herby - deep, dark and mysterious - chunks of wonderful slimy okra, prawns and crabclaw - layers of gutsy flavour with a bit of residual heat". Well, there you have it!

(On my second Coop's visit, I was lucky enough to chat with Coop himself, the owner of the place, who answered all my questions on the file powder, and even gave me a sample to smell, taste and take home with me - thanks, Coop. It is seriously funky stuff!)

Moving on to the Jambalaya (made famous for me by Newman in Seinfeld). Coop's Jambalaya (above) is "A traditional Creole dish rice dish, simmered with tomatoes, onion, bell pepper, local seasonings, boneless rabbit and smoked pork sausage" - it was bloody great - a bit spicier than the Gumbo, a taste sensation in my mouth to be honest...but I have to say, I just kept going back to the Gumbo.

I returned to Coop's the next evening for a snack - I ordered the Gumbo - that shows you just how much I loved it. The wonderful waitress, who btw, loves all things spangly, wouldn't let me order it. She was adamant that I had the gumbo yesterday, and I must choose something else to try! What a hoot. I capitulated, sportsfans, and so glad I did because she ordered me their Duck Quesadilla with Orange Sauce - and readers, I can't even begin to tell you how good that was, if I do, you'll be here for hours as I put superlative after superlative on this post, and we all know how boring that is for non-foodies!

So, readers. New Orleans. Gumbo. Coop's. Don't forget. And for all those lucky enough to live in Sydney...I bought "The Little Gumbo Book - 27 Carefully Created Recipes that Will Enable Everyone to Enjoy the Special Experiences of Gumbo". OH YEAH BABY!!!!