Gumbo Recipe

I never do things exactly by a recipe.  For some reason I always find a good reason to alter at least some ingredient, even when I'm trying to be exact.  This makes for some duds in the kitchen sometimes, and other times it's pure magic.  Last night was just plain yummy--Chicken and Sausage Gumbo, inspired by one of my favorite gumbo recipes in the Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook.  (that's a great book--I've only made one recipe in the whole thing that wasn't superbly delicious)  So, here's what I did last night.  A lot of ingredients were used because that's what I have, so feel free to substitute and make this gumbo your own!

An attempt to recreate deliciousness in a pot...
Ingredients:
-1 Kielbasa Sausage, diced
-About 2 chicken breasts worth of diced white chicken meat, salted, peppered and seasoned heavily w/ rotisserie chicken seasoning and left to soak that up in the fridge for a day or so
-The back and neck meat of 4 chicken carcasses I used to make the broth
-About 8 small green bell peppers, diced
-1 very large yellow onion, diced
-1/2 a head of garlic (maybe 8 cloves?), minced
-About 4 stalks of celery, sliced (the whole thing, not just the heart)
-1 zucchini, diced
-1 yellow squash like gourd thing, seeds scooped out, diced
-1/2 pkg frozed sliced okra (about a pound?)
-3 pints of chicken broth
-a handful of bay leaves.  Like, ten.  Or more.  Best tied together if you can find something to tie them with :)
-1 heaping tbsp Zataran's Cajun Seasoning
-1-2 tbsp dried Thyme
-1-2 tbsp Worcestershire
-3-4 shots Tobasco, to taste (my crew doesn't like things spicy, so I'm not allowed to put much)

First, I take out my nice thick cast aluminum dutch oven and cook up the diced sausage.  I let it sit on high heat to get nice and browned before stirring to get it browned all over.  Keeping the drippings in the pot, I remove the sausage and brown the chicken next in the same way.  Then, remove the chicken and saute the veggies (first the garlic, then onions, celery and peppers, in small enough batches to get everything browned, not steamed) in the same drippings.  It gets a nice coat of browned stuff on the bottom.  Leave it and keep cooking.  If you run out of drippings, add a little homemade lard from grassfed pigs :)  (You don't have to brown the veggies, but i think it adds a lot of flavor.  You can just brown some to cut down on time--the rest will cook in the soup.  I didn't brown the squash).

After everything has been browned, you have a few bowls of meat and veggies on the counter around you, and now you make the gumbo.  Take equal parts lard and flour, and cook over med heat to make a roux.  It takes a while.  Like 20 minutes.  You want it to get chocolatey brown, so it will have a nutty toasted smell (sort of like burnt, but nutty and toasted sound way better).  The start adding veggies to the roux.  It will be a thick muddy mess as the roux coats the veggies.  Once you get them all in, cook for a few minutes to get everything coated, and then you can start adding the broth slowly.  As you add the broth, make sure you scrape the bottom of the pot good to get all that that lovely brown fond into the stew, and stir well until you get all the broth in.  Take a deep whiff.  It should smell yummy, but it's not gumbo yet.  Let it get to an energetic simmer and add your seasonings to taste, feel free to sample often.  Don't forget to smell the deliciousness after you add each seasoning. Decide what you like so you can change it next time.  Keep the top on when you're not stirring and sampling.  Go ahead and put the chicken broth meat back in now, so it can soak up some flavor, but keep the rest of the meat reserved.

After the veggies are cooked enough that the onions are clear, you can add the breast meat and sausage back in.  This way you don't overcook it.  You can also throw in a few shots of bourbon for an extra kick, but I didn't have any last night.  Let everything get warm and happy together and serve over rice with file (pronounced fee-lay) on top if you like.  This gumbo will warm you up on a cold rainy day like nothing else :)