Roux Believer

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s gumbo,” Wilson replied. I shook my head sadly.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Wilson Nguyen is a marvelous chef, keeping every one of the five tables in his strip mall cafe full, in addition to five times that amount of food going out via takeout and delivery. His pho is considered by the cognoscenti to be among the best in the Bay Area. He’s an expert in delicately balancing the flavors that underpin Vietnamese, French and Chinese cuisine, as evidenced by the masterpieces he turns out in these genres on a regular basis, but this gumbo was evidence of a catastrophic failure to understand the assignment. 

“No, it isn’t,” I said matter-of-factly. “Gumbo does not have a clear broth. I can see the bottom of the bowl. What did you use for a roux?”

“No roux. I used okra to thicken. Recipe said to use roux or okra or file.”

“Yeah. I see your wheels of okra floating in there bright green. They’re not going to thicken anything if you throw them in at the end. Where did you get the recipe?”

“Online. cAIjunrecipes.com.”

“We’ve got a recipe in my family that goes back to 1792. I can’t share it with you or I’d have to kill you. But I can’t have you serving this and calling it “gumbo” either. So I’ll give you some pointers, if you like, for creating your own recipe for seafood gumbo.” Wilson grasped his chin between his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger and peered at the ceiling tiles a moment.

“You show me tomorrow. I can’t afford to throw this out and start from scratch.”

“No need to toss anything. We can fix it.” Wilson looked skeptical, but cocked his head toward the kitchen and led me inside.  A four-gallon cauldron sat simmering half-full of the half-hearted gumbo impostor. “I need two cups of flour and two cups of oil.”

Wilson came back with a canister of flour, a measuring cup, a can of olive oil, and a can of sesame oil. I pointed to the barrel of peanut oil that he used to fill his deep fryers. 

“No, bring me some of that. We need something that will work at high temperatures. While I get the roux started, you get a strainer and pull the okra and seafood from your soup. Set the seafood aside and chop the okra up as fine as you can.

As Wilson followed my instructions, I began whisking the flour and the oil together until it looked like a vanilla milkshake. I heated up another four-gallon cauldron and tossed the roux in until it metamorphosized through the heat and stirring and alchemy from vanilla to caramel to milk chocolate to dark chocolate.The Holy Trinity of diced onions, bell peppers, and celery exploded in the bottom of the pan with the hiss of a startled cat. Wilson became a roux believer and his watery soup became gumbo.