Gumbo

It's that time of year, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, a perfect excuse for making gumbo. We started our gumbo last week on our tasting menu at Eastbluff and have continued it this week at both restaurants. I love it and will eat it all day if I could erase my conscience. It tastes great and it represents the soul of the cook. It also has a little bit of butter, oil and flour.

A few years ago, before hurricane Katrina, even before Sage. I used to make a yearly pilgramage to New Orleans and the South for the Jazz Fest. It was a memorable week and for me as well as many other people the food was as important as the music. I had a chance encounter with Earl Palmer at a club, as well as a chance to meet Aaron Neville when I was hitch hiking home at an quite an early hour from a bar outside of the city.

I ate gumbo every chance I had as well as poorboys and muffaletas. There was barbecue and red beans and rice, crawfish and fried soft shell crabs and boy do I miss my trips to the South. It was the food and also the people.

But what I wanted to learn was the gumbo and what I realized was it was all about the roux. Some type of oil and flour cooked together until the flour mixture begins to cook and start turning brown. You have to keep stirring and you don't want to burn the roux but when you do it right the flavor of a chocolate colored roux imparts a nutty favor which is integral to a gumbo ( we also use this roux to finish our turkey gravy for Thanksgiving). It took me a long time to master my roux and now I have been able to teach it to some of the other cooks in the kitchen, but my quest for the perfect roux is something I will always remember and equate it with my trips to the South. ( Ask anyone who has tried about roux burns and they will tell you about the complexities of achieving the perfect roux.) Not the most healthy thing to use when cooking but the depth of flavor it adds as well as the texture is magical when done right.

Strawberries

February and Valentines Day tends to make people think of strawberries. Something about the holiday be it love, hearts or the color brings strawberries to the forefront. This week at the farmer's market we went on a hunt for strawberries.

Last week were the first strawberries I really started tasting this year and they were good for this time of year. There was some acid, a little sweetness and some real strawberry flavor. But this weekend it rained and I knew the berries were going to lose alot of their flavor yet I still needed them for our strawberry bruschetta at Sage on the Coast for our wine tasting Satgurday afternoon.

As we walked the market I saw strawberries both on the tables and in customers bags and baskets. Many of the berries we saw looked great but when I tasted them and talked to the farmers I realized that just as I expected the rain had robbed them of much of their flavor. Even the venerable Harry"s Berries were washed out. That is of course until I tasted the gnarly little ones that Gloria had grown.There in lay the problem. There were lots of big beautiful strawberries available without the flavor that makes a great strawberry or I could buy a strawberry that didn't look so great but had flavor, not the greatest flavor, but much better than the others.

I bought the ones with flavor. Thats me. It happens with tangerines, with tomatoes, with so many other fruits and vegetables. It is something I try to teach my chefs, and it is something I preach to anyone who will listen, the best looking produce doesn't always taste the best and that is why we go to the market. Of course there are lessons to learn in life reflected in our produce.