National Gumbo Day - October 12th

Yummy, both hubby and I love seafood gumbo. And I know that the Texas recipe is not as good as Louisiana's, but there is a place in San Antonio that sells some pretty good gumbo.

I did a search on Google search and they do have the File.

File' File' (pronounced fee-lay) is the traditional table condiment used on gumbo. Because of this, sometimes it is called "gumbo file". The early Cajuns learned to use file' from the Choctaw Indians of the Gulf coast, who evidently used it to thicken soups. File' is ground sassafras (Sassafras albidum) leaves.bf14c47a-a6da-4b0a-9090-f9ceb465737c.0e54086a2aed83e900bfba68a7c8b48c[1].jpeg

A tad blurry. LOL
 

CinnamonSugar said:
Part of my heritage (Daddy from Covington, LA)... except our family recipe was called File (Fee-lay) Gumbo and was seasoned with File, or ground Sassafras Leaves. I'm not sure they even sell it anymore.
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I've heard of file gumbo. There was an old song when I was little; my parents played the record....

"Jambalaya, crawfish pie, file gumbo..." I thought it was "chili gumbo", but they explained it. :D
 
Bella said:
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My, my! One of my favourite Hank Williams songs and there are many. We used stay down in Port Isabel in the Rio Grande Valley for the winter. When we went to some show where they had a live country band, I often went up to them and requested that they play "Jambalaya." The bands always obliged me and that really made my day. Hank wrote and recorded this song just before he died. He had left Audrey and married Billie Jean Jones on October, 1952. He died less than 3 months later . Great song!
 
My problem with gumbos is that no one will every top the gumbo made by my mother and grandmother. I keep trying different gumbos and there is just nothing to compare... I have the family recipes but never been able to get the roux right, let along match their gumbo.

Always used file in it, but never called it file gumbo. My family was from southwest Louisiana, kind of the opposite side of the state from @CinnamonSugar 's , probably the difference. Now I know why Hank called it file gumbo I guess. My mother always made chicken gumbo, not seafood. Had a couple of Cajun aunts who made seafood gumbo, and some duck gumbo. Never liked finding the buckshot in the duck.

Gumbo is originally African. What we eat is based on that with Cajun modifications.

the word “gumbo” which comes from the West African word “ki ngombo” for “okra”. West Africans used okra as a thickener in their version of the dish. The original West African gumbo has been described as stew-like, thickened with okra, and containing fish and shellfish

From West Africa to Southwest Louisiana: The Origin of Gumbo
https://iberiachamber.org/news/west-africa-southwest-louisiana-origin-gumbo-phebe-hayes
 

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