The dark gumbo mix this time out includes a loose-cannon IRA assassin, an activist priest who pushes everybody's buttons all the time, the moldering secrets of a murdered Delta bluesman, and as always, the New Orleans and south Louisiana landscapes, which Burke deftly conjures up as looming, fate-filled presences in themselves.
The roux is medium dark, and the gumbo is thickened with okra and full of chicken, shrimp, sausage and crab legs too thin to hold much meat but able to impart a rich, crabby flavor.
A few main dishes, in addition to the crab cakes, were standouts: the home-style seafood jambalaya with ham and andouille served over nicely cooked rice; and the dark and rich gumbo, with its tender morsels of treasure.
The longer the roux is cooked before being added to the gumbo, the darker it becomes and the more prevalent the roux flavor will be.
It adds an additional layer of poignancy to the gumbo shuffle of Dark Angel and its "we've all got to die some day" refrain, although Seagal saves his most effective set-piece – a wham-bam cover of Hoochie Coochie Man – for the encore.
His chicken and andouille gumbo is dense and dark, full of okra, fire and file.
Better is the seafood gumbo, made with a dark roux, a browned mixture of flour and oil, and the fried alligator.
Additionally, many were perturbed that the city suspended an already atypically early Carnival season for a week to accommodate the Super Bowl, an act of heresy akin to serving gumbo a color other than dark brown.
The gumbo here is the real thing--the roux is dark, the flavor smoky.
Gumbo, a classic Cajun dish, is frequently thickened with blonde or dark roux, depending on the recipe.
In Cajun country, meanwhile, just outside New Orleans, they use a flour-and-oil-based roux (darker and richer than any French roux I've seen), as a base and thickener; they may or may not add filé to their gumbo, while some modern Creole versions use roux, too, only not as dark and not so much of it.
