GUMBO

The Great Plotnik had never made gumbo until yesterday (and the day before). It always seemed a bit daunting -- making a roux, and all that seafood, and at least twenty steps -- but he and Ducknik have been living next door to The Gumbo Doctor for years and they've tasted unbelievably delicious concoctions that have come out of GD's gumbo pot, and some day maybe she's gonna move to Sonoma, or the Plotniks to Argentina, and then what? Fortunately, the fabulous Pat Conroy cookbook came along, and there was the recipe for the gumbo Conroy made while writing The Great Santini, and the logic goes like this: Pat Conroy is a great writer so he must be a great cook. Plotnik is a pretty good writer, so how bad can his gumbo be?

Two days later: YUM-MO.

The first day you simmer a chicken in herbs for your stock, and make your roux. The next morning you skim the fat off the broth, drain the excess oil off your roux, then cut up the chicken, throw it into the stock pot with the roux and continue simmering, adding more herbs and spices and vegetables, then more file to thicken it up a bit, then your andouille sausage and tomato puree, then at the very end you add your crayfish tails, shrimp and scallops. Meanwhile, that broth just keeps reducing and adding more flavor.



At the last moment, The Great Plotnik realized he had just made gumbo for 15 people. So he got on the phone and called The Great Domin-Nik and J-Whacky and got them to come over to sample the goods.



Gumbo is a lot of work. Is it worth it? Yeah. But the better alternative is to get invited to the Gumbo Doctor's house and eat up all the different gumbos that occasionally turn up over there -- her mother's, her brother's, her friend Sunny's, and of course the Gumbo Doctor's Gumbo. How does Plotnik's stack up? Oh, probably not as good as any of them, but it sure tasted nice over brown saffron rice.