shrimp gumbo
The owner came from the back, out of the kitchen. “Boys, you are welcome to come look in the freezers,” he said, “but you have eaten everything in the place.” We eyed each other, stomachs more than sated, and noted the smug look on each other’s face. “Nope,” I said, “we are done.” Mission accomplished at the all-you-can-eat frog-leg buffet on the outskirts of Ruston, Louisiana, circa 1980. Lesson learned by the owner of the diner: You cannot compete with the appetite of a horde of 18-year-old males. If you offer it, they will descend like locusts and strip the foliage bare from the counters and the freezers.
Sometime around 2005, my father and I were touring some historic sites in the western parishes. After a morning on the battlefield of Mansfield, we stopped in Many for lunch. At a small cinder block restaurant on the outskirts of town, we ordered bowls of crawfish étouffée that were as good as any to be found. A glass of iced tea and a slice of pecan pie and we were back on the road. We spent the afternoon at Los Adaes, an old Spanish fort. When the French held Louisiana, the Spanish viceroy in Mexico City established this eastern outpost to stake a claim to the area.
One fall day, perhaps 1976, after visiting a construction site near Abbeville, Dad and I passed through the river town of Mermentau. There, we spotted a shell-covered parking lot packed at lunchtime with pickup trucks — in south Louisiana, a siren’s call to a gustatory feed. We slowed, found a spot, and got out. The menu was short. Nary a hamburger to be found, gumbo or catfish sauce piquante were the only options. We made our choice, paid, and moved to the other end of the counter to collect our bowls. Today’s lunch was the deep mahogany of a chicken-and-sausage gumbo. We took our place outside on long tables under the oaks, the oil roughnecks sliding over to make room for us.
Another day, this one in spring of 1984, I caught the ferry with friends and crossed the Mississippi to the historic town of Plaquemine. We stopped at a few random gas stations and bought a couple of pounds of homemade boudin at each. Boudin is a regional meal of rice, pork, and liver stuffed in natural hog casing. It is found throughout the southern part of the state, a perfect lunchtime repast, a meal-in-one that satisfies. We caught the ferry back across and spent the afternoon sitting on the levee eating our lunch and drinking Dixie beer before heading back to Baton Rouge.
This coming weekend I’ll be off the farm and back in the Deep South for the annual get-together of men in our family. We are staying in a lodge near Ville Platte, a town that used to be able to compete with all others for the quality of its boudin. We shall soon see if 2018 has brought any diminution to that reputation.
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Reading this weekend: Payne Hollow (Hubbard) and Between Meals (Liebling)
I wish I could capture that moment of gumboness for others.
We’re planning a christmas buffet, and I’m supposed to contribute something, but seem unable to do so.
The gumboness would certainly be radiating from something I harvested from my garden, but the garden year has been a bad one.
And I can’t think of something store-bought to replace it. There’s no connection between it and something worth sharing. Weird.
Save travels.
Thanks, Michael. I sense you are a vegetarian? So, try a pot of gumbo z’herbes: http://emerils.com/122633/gumbo-zherbes.
That’s a fun one 🙂 I think my lack of enough prime agrarian real estate may have conveyed the impression that I only partake of squashy vegetable matter, but that is not so.
Still, I thank you for your encouragement and will attempt to overcome my fear of other people’s produce.
I’ve just finished ‘The Storm Before The Storm’ – is there an agrarian tome I could follow this up with? I was thinking about something which describes what farming started to evolved into once the deteriorating Roman Empire had lost its grip on centralised grain handling. I already followed your suggestion and have therefore read ‘The Classical Tradition in West European Farming ‘; is there something snazzy that comes to mind?
Have you already availed yourself of Sir Albert Howard? Two of his works come immediately to mind: The Soil and Health, and An Agricultural Testament
Never should there be a serious English gardener who has not at least had a peek at these.
Michael,
Have you ever read Columella’s On Agriculture (12 volumes)? There is a Loeb classics edition that is worth seeking out. Don’t let the 12 vol. scare you, it is manageable and quite interesting. In fact a surprising good read after 2000 years.
Thank you, thank you and thank you!
I shall have my breast artificially inflated, having been called an English Gardener, and work on pronouns (mostly ‘I’) and the Oxford Comma.
But before I come to that – and following JMG’s hint – I need to finish ‘Custer Died For Your Sins’.
If the get together finds itself one man short… let me know. I would be willing to make the sacrifice to prevent such deficiency having a negative impact on the proceedings. Am capable of providing my own natural hog casing for any boudin in need of such. Might be able to refrain from punning for the duration, but unfortunately cannot promise this.
I appreciate your willingness to make the sacrifice. Hey, might be up your way second week of December, weather cooperating. We won’t find gumbo. But, we might find an acceptable alternative. As long as it isn’t Skyline chili, I’m good.
I’m not ready to surrender yet any hope that gumbo might be found. I might surrender that any gumbo found would have to strive mightily to compete with a very good Cajun gumbo such as one might find in your home state. But the only salient ingredient I’m thinking we’d have the most trouble with is fresh seafood.
Yellow Springs is not too far from the Outlet Mall – and it is a fascinating place all its own. Gumbo hunting there might prove interesting.
Ah, my picture of shrimp gumbo misleads. All good natives of the bayou state know that chicken and sausage are the traditional ingredients in gumbo. And, okra? Strictly for the creoles of New Orleans.