Marigolds

Several months ago, back when the sun was shining for 14 or 15 hours a day and I still had a normal 9-5 day job, I decided that my cookbook shelf was not quite full enough, and I treated myself to a copy of Tender: A cook and his vegetable patch by Nigel Slater. Slater is an icon in the world of British food writing. While I’d heard many wonderful things about him & his cookery books, I’d never actually explored his writing & recipes myself. But I can always use another resource for veggie-centric recipes, especially ones that are not strictly vegetarian (not remotely, in the case of this book). So room was made for this lovely, squat book on my shelf. 

I’ve prepared quite a few of the dishes so far, and one of my favorites was this soup. The header reads “A soup the color of marigolds,” and the recipe is written as a single paragraph. I love this kind of recipe for its simplicity, and for its strict dependence on using the best ingredients. I don’t recommend making it right now (if you live in my region of the world) because you’d be hard pressed to find acceptable tomatoes of any shade, but if you reside in a different climate, or if you can wait until summer comes around again, I highly recommend it.

Start with a shallot, or an onion, or whatever’s handy, and about a pound each of yellow tomatoes* and carrots. Chop them all up, and cook the shallot in olive oil until it’s soft and going translucent.

Add the tomatoes and carrots, and stir them up a bit. Cook for a few more minutes.

Then add a quart of water, a couple of bay leaves, and salt and pepper.

Simmer for a half an hour, until the carrots are quite soft, then puree with the appliance of your choice.

My choice is the stick blender my mom gave me last year, which means I’m no longer in danger of spattering steaming vegetable matter all over myself & the kitchen when I’m too impatient to work in small batches in a regular blender. Feel free to keep the soup kind of chunky, or keep going until it’s velvety smooth–whatever is your preference.

Then just check the seasoning and serve. Slater recommends topping with chopped chives. Having none on hand, I drizzled a spoonful of good olive oil into the bowl.

It is amusing (to me) that some of the most compelling vegetable recipes I’ve found recently are coming from two non-vegetarian British cooks (Slater and Ottolenghi). Historically one equates British food with vegetables boiled into submission, served alongside some meat, or something fried. I like it when people defy expectations.

*You could, of course, substitute red tomatoes. I am not someone who thinks overly hard about presentation, but the color of this soup really is lovely with yellow tomatoes.

A Taste of New Orleans

C. and I are both quite fond of okra, but we don’t always know what to do with it. The flavor is purely vegetal, and you have no doubt that you’re Eating Plants, as Mr. Pollan advises us to do. But the texture goes so quickly from crunchy to chewy to mush that I am reluctant to experiment too much with this particular plant. That, thankfully, is what cookbooks and food blogs are for. I love the Ottolenghi recipe I’ve made before (which also works with green beans), and I was very pleased with my rendition of gumbo (though it is not much like C.’s favorite version, from Big Mamou’s in Springfield, MA). Okra can be very good fried, but I hate deep-frying anything in my own kitchen. 

So this week, I happened to remember one of the cookbooks I acquired while working for a publisher, Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food from the Atlantic Rim by Jessica B. Harris. Naturally, it’s got a half dozen or so options for dishes using okra. Creole Okra seemed like it would work very well over cheesy grits (Deborah Madison’s double-boiler version), and so that’s what we had for dinner.

Start with onion, or leeks if that’s what’s in your fridge. Saute them in olive oil until translucent.

Add minced celery, bell pepper, a hot pepper if you like, and a bit of tomato paste. Cook for five minutes.

Add chopped tomatoes and a few dashes of Tabasco sauce, and cook some more until things sort of thicken up. Theoretically, the tomatoes should be peeled & seeded, but those are tedious steps to take, so I didn’t bother.

Add the trimmed okra and cook, partially covered, for about 10 minutes, until the okra is just tender. 

The author suggests serving over white rice, which would surely be wonderful. Admittedly, I am a rice fanatic, so I always think that’s a wonderful idea. It was very good with the cheesy grits, too.

Creole Okra over Cheesy Grits

adapted from Jessica B. Harris

serves 4-5

3-4 leeks, cleaned & chopped coarsely

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 small stalk of celery, minced

1/3 c red bell pepper, minced

1 jalapeno pepper, seeded & minced

2 tsp tomato paste

2 large tomatoes, coarsley chopped

Tabasco to taste

3/4 lb fresh okra, trimmed

Cheesy grits for serving, from your favorite recipe, or white rice

Saute the leeks in the olive oil over medium heat until translucent. 

Add the celery, bell pepper, jalapeno, and tomato paste. Cook another 5 minutes. 

Add the chopped tomatoes & Tabasco, and continue cooking until the sauce thickens.

Add the okra. Cook another 10 minutes, partially covered, until the okra is tender.

Serve over grits or rice.

Bucatini in Ragu di Salsiccia

This is a post that starts with a book, which is only right given my real news of the week. 

The Geometry of Pasta is a book I had coveted for quite a while, and even put on my Christmas wish list one year. But nobody took the bait until the following year, when C. gave it to me, because she loves me and because she knows what kind of dinners would result. The idea behind the book, and behind a lot of Italian cooking, is that certain shapes of pasta belong with certain specific sauces for very important, math-based reasons. Orecchiette, for example, go wonderfully with crumbled sausage and chopped broccoli rabe, because the bits of meat and vegetables nestle into the ear-shaped pasta. Some sauces cling better to a pasta with ridges. Some pastas work best with rich, oily sauces. In short, the reason Italian menus so often look the same is that there is a Right Way of Doing Things. The Italians might not be as rigid in their culinary techniques as the French, but there is still quite a lot of thought behind all those traditional recipes. And this book explains the process.

I appreciate when there is a Right Way of Doing Things in the kitchen, but as often as not, knowing the Right Way just provides me with the ammunition to do things My Way and still get a good dinner out of it. Which is what happened here. I had a box of bucatini, and a pile of tomatoes, and some sausage. Bucatini, I learned, is traditionally served with an amatriciana sauce, but all the other ones on the approved list were equally rich, even if they weren’t meat-based, and often had a base of tomatoes. So I flipped around, found a recipe intended for gnocchi, and voila*, bucatini with sausage ragu. 

Begin with some sausage links. Brown them in oil, in a hot pan, and then remove to a plate. It’s ok if they haven’t cooked through, because they will later. Slice them into 3/4″ rounds and then move on to the veggies. 

Chop the garlic, and brown it just slightly in olive oil. 

Then add some red pepper flakes, a lot of chopped tomatoes, and the sausage chunks.

Simmer for a long time, like nearly an hour. Don’t wait as long as you think you should to get the pasta water boiling, because bucatini, man, even with the hole down the middle, they take a rather long time to cook through. Which should be done in nicely salted water. Save a cup of the pasta water, just in case the sauce needs thinning, then drain the pasta.

Take the sauce off the heat and add in some fresh herbs, The cookbook recommends rosemary, but I had an abundance of basil, so that’s what I used, and it was lovely.

Taste for salt (which shouldn’t be a problem, given all that sausage) and mix in the pasta. 

I highly recommend this slightly unorthodox pasta/sauce combination. I also recommend having it for leftovers the next day, with or without some added fresh chopped tomatoes. If you opt for the tomatoes, try drizzling on a little red wine vinegar and olive oil.

*What is Italian for “voila”?

Throwing Things in a Bowl

“I don’t really know how this is going to turn out.”

That is a phrase that is heard rather frequently in my kitchen. Being a CSA member has helped boost my confidence in the kitchen when it comes to improvising. And I’ve also learned that vegetables that ripen at the same time, in the same soil, do tend to taste good together. Even so, it is usually with no small amount of trepidation that I translate, “Hm, what if I made tabbouleh with kale?” from passing fancy into lunch.

Usually, the process begins with perusing my cookbooks & googling the idea in question to see if I am treading new (scary but interesting) ground, or if others have provided a roadmap of sorts. And usually, it turns out that my ideas are not terribly original. Every vegetable-loving blogger, food writer, and cookbook author worth her salt has already been there and done that. Especially when kale is involved.

So I poke around, confirm that I’m on the right track, get some hints as to ratios. . . and then I ditch all those recipes and start throwing things in a bowl. This sort of meal doesn’t usually wind up being photographed, because my assumption is so often that it will not be worth even putting on a plate, let alone sharing with the world at large. But sometimes I get lucky, and discover that oh my goodness, kale tabbouleh is quite good! The brightness of the parsley sort of shines over the earthy kale, and the contrasting textures of the cooked & raw greens are really nice. The cucumber is wonderfully crunchy against the chewy bulgur and squishy tomatoes. I do recommend eating this rather soon after it’s made, because the cucumber gets a little funny if too much time goes by. Not inedible funny, just not quite as crisp, as it absorbs the lemon & olive oil.

Kale Tabbouleh

serves 4 or so, as a side salad

1/2 c medium bulgur

1 c vegetable stock (or water)

1 large bunch of kale, stems removed

1/2 bunch of parsley (at least 1/2 c)

1 small tomato

1/2 small red onion

1/2 cucumber

2-3 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 lemon

Put the stock (or water) and the bulgur in a small pot together, and bring to a boil. Turn the heat to low, cover, and simmer until it’s tender, 15-20 minutes. (Alternately, cook according to the package’s instructions.) Dump it into a strainer and rinse with cool water. Transfer to a large bowl.

Bring another pot of water to a boil. Salt it generously, and add the kale leaves. Cook for just a minute or so, then strain them, too, and rinse in cold water. Chop the pieces pretty finely, and add them to the bulgur. Squeeze in the lemon and add the olive oil. 

Chop the parsley (leaves & thin stems only). Dice the tomato and the onion. Cut the cucumber lengthwise, remove the seeds, and dice it. Add all of these things to the bowl and stir. Add salt & pepper to taste. Best eaten the same day.

Tomato Galette

Did you know that there are people who hate tomatoes? I mean, haaaaaate them. The combination of the flavor and the texture makes certain people literally gag. I find this totally incomprehensible. I mean, look at these beautiful things:

How can you not want to grab a handful of those little sunburst cherry tomatoes and see how many you can fit in your mouth before they all explode? (I’ve done that with grapes, actually, but not tomatoes, and the answer is 17.) But I guess it’s the same for me with smoked fish, to which I have a taste aversion. For years, I thought my friends who would quietly refuse tomatoes, ask for them to be left out of salads, were just a little bit crazy and had probably never had a really GOOD tomato. It turns out they were just being polite, whereas when I am offered smoked fish, I freely admit that if I eat it I will want to throw up, so no, thank you. No loss to me–it’s not like an allergy to something I actually enjoy–and it means there’ll be more for everyone else. Why mince words, when it means people will keep insisting you try the damn stuff?

So I won’t force this galette on anyone who is in the tomato-phobe camp (and my goodness, there are a lot of you). But for the rest of us, here is what you do:

Make a pie crust. Half a recipe is fine, since you won’t need a top crust or a latice. Chill it, then roll it out in a rough circle, and smear some good mustard in a circle in the middle. Then grate some cheese on top–cheddar, gruyere, whatever you like.

Take your cherry tomatoes (smallish ones) and layer them over the cheese. Get them in as close as you can, with as little space between them as possible.

Then you just fold up the sides of the crust. Try to make it roughly even, though keeping in mind that “rustic” is not a bad adjective to describe this dish. If the crust starts to split around the edges, no big deal–just pinch it back together. Put it on a baking sheet, or in a pie plate, lined with a piece of parchment (perhaps the same piece you had wrapped the dough in while you refrigerated it?) and stick it in the oven.

The problem with this recipe is that you really need to let it cool before you cut into it. As wonderful as it will smell right out of the oven, trust me that it will really benefit from getting a bit closer to room temperature. You want all the tomato-y juices to sort of gel–which they will do on their own–rather than run all over the place as soon as you cut a slice.

This is a wonderful dinner with just a green salad on the side. And leftover the next day, eaten at room temperature, a slice of this is infinitely better than cold pizza.

Sahl-mo-RAY-ho

If you are planning on making salmorejo, first you must look at a calendar, and at a map. If it is earlier in the year than July, or later than September (early October if you’re very lucky), and you live in the northeastern section of the United States, then I’m very sorry but you will be eating something else for dinner.

But if you are still in that glorious season known as “peak tomato,” wherever you are, then this is what you need to do:

Acquire a pile of tomatoes. They don’t need to be pretty, but they need to be properly ripe and juicy. Probably 3-4 pounds of them, if you want to make any significant quantity.

Then find some bread. Good bread, but not bread that would be too interesting on its own. Something like ciabatta is great, or a plain baguette, or anything called “peasant” or “country.” Not whole- or multi-grain, and not sourdough. If it happens to be the end of a loaf you didn’t quite finish with last night’s dinner, even better. 

Take the tomatoes and cut them into chunks. Since you want all the juice from them, I find it easiest to hold the tomato in one hand over a bowl and cut pieces off with a paring knife, dropping them in the bowl as you go. 

Now you need to get your hands a little dirty. Squeeze the tomato chunks pretty tightly, dripping as much liquid as you can into the bowl and tossing the damp pieces of tomato into your food processor (or into another large bowl, if you’re using a stick blender). Add a couple of cloves of garlic, peeled and with the middle green bit taken out.

Cut up your bread into cubes and toss them with the tomato juice. Drizzle in some good olive oil, some red wine or sherry vinegar, and a sprinkling of salt. Now squeeze the bread cubes, too, so they really soak up the flavors and get nice and soggy.

Add them to the food processor with the tomatoes and puree it all until it’s smooth. If you need to, do this in two batches. My Cuisinart only holds 10 cups, I think, and I frequently wind up with tomato-y bread spattered on my backsplash and countertops. This can be mitigated by a tea towel held on top of the machine while it’s running, or by having a better sense of what 10 cups looks like. 

Pour the soup into a bowl and stick in the fridge until you’re ready to eat. It doesn’t have to be ice cold, but chilled is better than room temperature. While it’s cooling, hard boil an egg. When it’s dinner time, chop up the egg and cut up some prosciutto (or if you are less budget-conscious, jamon ibérico). Put a spoonful of each on the bowl of soup, and drizzle in a little more olive oil.

Salmorejo

Note: the quantities are difficult here (read: totally made up). I’ve been making this soup for 10 years, since my host-mom from my semester abroad in Seville taught me how, and I have never once measured anything. Sometimes I have to add more bread after pureeing; more often I add more tomatoes. Everything is pretty much “to taste.” This is peasant food, the answer to the question, “We have some stale bread and a pile of tomatoes. What can we make for dinner?” So don’t worry about it too much.

3-4 lbs tomatoes

2 cloves garlic

3-4 thick slices of country bread

1/4 c extra virgin olive oil

2-3 Tbsp sherry or red wine vinegar

1 tsp salt

1 egg

4 slices prosciutto

Cut up the tomatoes over a bowl. Squeeze them in big fistfuls, letting the juices run back into the bowl, and dropping the chunks into a food processor. Peel the garlic cloves and add them to the food processor. 

Cut the bread into cubes and add to the bowl of tomato juice, along with the olive oil, vinegar, and salt. Toss/squeeze the bread until it’s all thoroughly soaked with the liquid. Add it to the food processor. Puree everything together until it’s smooth. Taste for seasoning and balance of ingredients, adding more of anything as needed.

Pour the soup into a bowl and store in the fridge until you’re ready to serve. Hard boil the egg. When it’s time to eat, peel and chop up the egg, and cut the prosciutto into little pieces. Allow each person to put a spoonful of egg and ham on top of the soup, along with another drizzle of olive oil.

Simple Summer Supper

(Note: I hate the word “supper” but I needed it for the alliterative value here. It won’t happen again.)

I was tipped off to this pasta recipe by the Wednesday Chef, though originally it was published in the New York Times, way back in 1996, and revisited in 2007 in one of Amanda Hesser’s Recipe Redux columns. Like so many great summer meals, this is one of those “don’t bother making it unless your tomatoes are perfectly, lusciously ripe” recipes. Spaghetti is probably my least favorite pasta, so I went with the original suggestion of rigatoni.

Start in the morning. Before you go to work, mince up some garlic and mix it in a bowl with a lot of very good olive oil, and a handful of basil leaves, cut into ribbons. Ignore Hal McGee’s recent piece about the dangers of leaving food unrefrigerated for long periods of time, place a big plate on top of the bowl to keep out errant fruit flies, and go about your business for the day.

When you get home, chop up a pile of tomatoes and mix them into the infused oil. Then go do your laundry, or run to the store to get some rigatoni and fresh mozzarella, which is what you need next.

A couple of hours later, it’s dinner time. Boil a pot of water, salt it well, and cook the pasta al dente (as if there were any other way to make pasta). While it’s cooking, dice the mozzarella coarsely. Drain the pasta, pour it on top of the tomatoes, and then put the cheese on top of that. 

Here is where I made a small mistake: you should let the cheese melt a little from the heat of the pasta, but not for more than a couple of minutes. Then mix the pasta and the cheese together, leaving the tomatoes at the bottom of the bowl for now, and let it sit for another few minutes. If you let the cheese melt on top for, say, as long as it takes to run down to the laundry room, pull two loads out of the dryer, and fold them, the cheese will have melted beautifully–and then begun to cool again. When you get back upstairs, it will have reformed into one solid layer on top of the pasta. If you were making pizza, you’d be golden, but it makes it tricky to toss together. Which is what you do now, with the tomatoes and garlic and everything. 

Breaking up the cheese with tongs, or a knife, or your fingers, isn’t the most difficult thing in the world, but it slows you down significantly just as you ought to be sitting down to dinner. Which will be pretty damn good, no matter what. And it makes excellent leftovers the next day, eaten at room temperature.

Degrees of Separation

I love it when I stumble across recipes that require just exactly what I have in my fridge. This Persian saffron-spiced stew is not technically one of those, but it’s pretty damn close. 

Eats Well with Others is a blog by another member of my CSA. She is in the big leagues as far as food blogging goes. She writes guest posts on Marcus Samuelsson’s website. Her superior photography skills have gotten her past the velvet ropes of Tastespotting. And I’m pretty sure people who are not related to her read her blog. But most importantly to me, she writes about the food she makes using exactly the same things as are in my own fridge. In this case, the recipe was already a meatless adaptation of a recipe from Healthy Cooking for the Jewish Home: 200 Recipes for Eating Well on Holidays and Every Day, which had been written up on a couple of OTHER food blogs. Already several degrees removed from the original, I’ve altered it again by skipping the pasta & swapping lentils for the split peas (because I didn’t have any split peas), which I cooked very simply, just adding a little salt at the end.

Then onto the veggies. The onion gets sauteed in a little olive oil, and then in goes the chopped spinach right on top. 

Once it’s wilted, add the diced eggplant and bell peppers, plus salt & pepper. 

Once the eggplant is starting to get soft, add chopped tomatoes, cinnamon, and saffron. Go easy on the saffron, and not just because it’s wicked expensive–the flavor can easily overpower whatever else is in a dish, taking it from delicate to metallic before you know it.

Then mix in tomato paste that’s been diluted in hot water, and the lentils (drained). Squeeze some lemon juice on top and serve in soup bowls, drizzle on a little good olive oil, and eat with some bread. Ideally a focaccia that’s got some goat cheese on it or something, just so you don’t find yourself accidentally eating another vegan meal.

As noted in the original recipe, this would probably be great with pasta, too, but I liked it just as a summer stew. Filling, but not heavy at all.

Spicy Hippie Cabbage

Remember last summer when I finally found a cabbage recipe to get excited about? (A non-cole slaw recipe, I mean.) Well, we made that the other week, and it was pretty awesome. And then I got another head of cabbage, and no longer had any spare oranges in my fridge, so I had to branch out. After rooting around in my stash of cookbooks, I settled on a recipe for Cabbage with Indian Spices from the hippiest book I own*, Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables (aka, the one with the dude in an orange feather boa on the cover). I used the heirloom variety we got, Early Jersey Wakefield, but any kind will do. 

 

In addition to a pound of cabbage, you’ll need quite a lot of onions, a big tomato, fresh ginger, turmeric, cayenne, and coriander. Chop the onion and saute in vegetable oil over medium-high heat, with some minced ginger and a hot pepper if it suits your tastes. I used dried, because that’s what I had, but in any case you want it whole (or halved lengthwise if it’s fresh), not chopped up. Cook until the onion starts to brown, 15-20 minutes.

 

Then in goes the shredded cabbage, the spices, and a few tablespoons of water. Stir it up, and simmer, covered, about 10 minutes.

 

Then the tomato, chopped (and peeled, if you have more patience than I do), and a little salt. Cook another 5 or 10 minutes.

 

Serve over rice, after removing the hot pepper. Ideally basmati rice. My cabinets usually have a very diverse selection of rice, but this day, basmati wasn’t available, so I did long-grain white rice cooked with a bay leaf and called it a day. A most delicious day, at that.

 

*That is a lie. The hippiest book I own is Rise Up Singing: The Group Singing Songbook.

A Yankee Looks South

I am really, really not southern. I was raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia by parents who had grown up further north along the eastern seaboard. Okra was not a part of my vocabulary, let alone my diet. Nonetheless, when the optional okra was consistently all gone by the time I arrived at Lenox Hill to collect my share, I was a little miffed. The farmer’s note about the okra was that they used to grow it in large quantities, and it always ended up in the swap box, so they stopped. But now okra seemed to be experiencing a revival of sorts, because the smallish bag they sent (“take it if you like”) was disappearing immediately, thwarting some of our dinner plans. Eventually, the farmer got hip to the situation and changed the instructions to “take it if you like–no more than 3 pieces.” Which I did. 

J. is a genuine southerner (by blood, and now also by residence). Her advice, when I asked what to do with okra, was to make gumbo. So after 2 weeks of purposely choosing very large pieces, I had just enough to make a variation on Paula Deen’s gumbo, her recommended starting place. 

According to J., in order to count as gumbo, the dish must have sausage, shrimp, okra, and onions. The roux is important, too, but those ingredients are the bare minimum. So I raided my fridge & freezer, bought a few extra things at the Italian market, and did my best. Personally, I’m very happy with the results, though I’ve yet to share them with a known gumbo authority, so a real verdict is still to come.

First, I browned some sliced andouille sausage in vegetable oil. 

After removing the meat to a plate, I added some lard to the remaining oil, and some flour, and stirred over low heat until the roux was nicely browned. I was a little afraid that I was burning it, but it turned out ok.

The instructions are to let the roux cool before continuing, and while I don’t entirely understand why that’s necessary, I followed Ms. Deen’s advice. I let it sit while I chopped some vegetables, and then turned back on the heat and added the rest of the lard, an onion, a lot of minced garlic, a bell pepper, and a stash of chopped celery I had in the freezer. 

Then some Worcestershire sauce (I won’t tell you how long that bottle has been hiding in my kitchen), a big handful of chopped parsley, and some crushed red pepper, because a little spice sounded like a good idea. (C. is slowly influencing my cooking, even when she’s not in the kitchen.)

That was followed by four cups of vegetable stock (brought to a simmer in a separate pot), and the sausage. I brought the gumbo to a boil, then let it cook, covered, for about 45 minutes. I took that time to run out and get shrimp and white rice.

Then I added the chopped tomato and sliced okra. Next time I will probably slice the okra thinner, in addition to seeking out smaller pieces. This simmered for another hour, which was plenty of time to make the rice, and watch an episode of True Blood to get myself in a southern mood.

I decided that rather than cook the shrimp separately, I’d add it at this point, and cover for another minute or two–just long enough for it to cook through. Then it was just a matter of adding the chopped scallions (and theoretically some more parsley if I hadn’t used up my entire stash already).

Serve in soup bowls, with a big spoonful of white rice.

As I said, I declared this a success. It does make me wonder, though, why so much of southern cuisine involves dishes that must simmer or braise for hours and hours. I would think that a climate that allows for a very long growing season and sweltering summers would drive people to a raw foods diet, just to keep the kitchen as cool as possible. Not that I’m complaining about the existence of gumbo, mind you. 

Yankee Gumbo
adapted from Paula Deen

1/4 c vegetable oil
12 oz andouille sausage, sliced into 1/4″ rounds
1/2 c flour
5 tablespoons lard
1 large onion, chopped
8 cloves garlic, minced
1 bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
1/4 c Worcestershire sauce
1/4 bunch Italian parsley, chopped
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (optional)
4 c vegetable stock, simmering
2 medium tomatoes, chopped (about 12 oz)
2 c okra, sliced 1/4″-1/2″ thick
1/2 pound small shrimp, cleaned
4 scallions, sliced

Heat the vegetable oil in a big heavy-bottomed pot (or Dutch oven) over medium heat. Add the sausage rounds and cook until they’re lightly browned. Remove to a plate and turn the heat to low.

Add 2 Tbsp of the lard, and the flour, and cook for 8-10 minutes, stirring constantly, until you have a deep brown roux.

Add the remaining lard, the onion, garlic, bell pepper, and celery. Cook 10 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the Worcestershire sauce, parsley, and red pepper. Cook 10 more minutes. Add the stock and the cooked sausage. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat & cover, simmering for 45 minutes.

Add the tomatoes and okra, and cook covered for 1 hour.

Add the shrimp, stir, and cook 1-2 minutes, until the shrimp are cooked through. Turn off the heat and stir in the scallions. Serve with long-grain white rice.