MAR_APR_2014_FINAL_3-15-16

Good Friday, Good Gumbo

Leah Chase, Dooky Chase Restaurant, New Orleans, LA

by Sara Roahen + photo by Cheryl Gerber

F or the Madisonville-born Creole chef Leah (Lange) Chase, who operates the restaurant Dooky Chase, preparing gumbo z’herbes is a Lenten ritual, as automatic as fish on Fridays and as reverential as Easter Sunday Mass. Holy Thursday has been green gumbo day in the Lange family for as long as she can remember. Her sister in Mississippi still cooks it at home every year, and Mrs. Chase preserves that tradition for her restaurant customers, some of whom reserve a seat at her gumbo z’herbes table a year in advance. Nine different kinds of greens — first

and can go vegetarian with equally stunning results, Mrs. Chase’s version is hearty and carnivorous, a meal to hold Catholics through to Easter Sunday when they may eat meat again. In her published recipe,which appears in her cookbook, “The Dooky Chase Cookbook,” and her biography by Carol Allen, “Leah Chase: Listen, I Say Like This,” Mrs. Chase thickens and flavors her gumbo z’herbes with a roux and filé powder. She incorporates the latter just before serving, taking care to mix it in slowly so that it doesn’t “lump up,” as she once described S H O P

what can happen when filé is added too quickly.These typical gumbo ingredients, in combination with dried thyme and smoked sausage, nudge the flavors of what turns out to be a seriously foreign-looking soup in the direction of, well, a gumbo. Gumbo z’herbes (a contraction of the French gumbo des herbes ) may look like a damp forest floor at dusk, but prepared by the hands of a capable cook, it somehow tastes perfectly like South Louisiana. Mrs. Chase anticipates serving gumbo z’herbes to 600 customers over the course of three seatings this year. “I’ll do about 75

simmered in ham stock and then pushed through a meat grinder or puréed in a food processor — commune with nearly as many meat products. When I once shopped for and made this dish with her, she used ham, chicken, beef stew meat, and three types of sausage (including chaurice, a fresh Creole hot sausage). While green gumbo is versatile

gallons,” she says. Last year she sold 25 gallons for takeout alone. This would be a significant feat for any chef; for a woman who turned 91 years old on Twelfth Night, it’s a phenomenon. Nothing could keep her from working the gumbo pots on Holy Thursday, she told me. And once the crowds are fed, I bet she’ll be working the dining room, too.

WHERE THE CHEFS

“I can go to Rouses everyday and find good fresh vegetables, good, fresh meat, everything I need. They help me in my kitchen to make a better menu for my guests, and a fresher menu for my guests.” —Chef Leah Chase SHOP

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY MARCH | APRIL 2014