SpiceLines

This traditional Louisiana gumbo is rich with shellfish, and seasoned with
thyme, black and cayenne pepper, and file powder from the sassafras tree.

I had an unexpectedly delicious gumbo last week.

In the Mardi Gras spirit, Guglhupf, an artisanal bakery and patisserie in Durham, N.C., was offering a spicy gumbo special. With some trepidation, I tried it--but I needn't have worried. The gumbo was great-- rich and savory, thick with tiny shrimp, chicken and spicy local sausage, and the chef, Mary Melies, had given it a truly authentic touch, seasoning it with file powder from the sassafras tree.

The gumbo was so good that I went home and pulled Mary Land’s Louisiana Cookery off the top shelf of the spice library. I stumbled across this wonderful 1954 cookbook at Faulkner House Books in Pirate’s Alley in the French Quarter in the balmy pre-Katrina days. Happily, the owners—Rosemary James and her husband, Joseph J. DeSalvo—reopened early last year, and are doing a thriving business in first editions of Southern literature and hard-to-find books about New Orleans. It also happens to be a repository of great Louisiana cookbooks.

Mary Land grew up on the Rough and Ready Plantation in the Red River Valley in the northern part of the state. The faded photo on the back flap shows a well-upholstered, sixty-ish woman not entirely comfortable with the camera: she’s gazing firmly into the lens, with a fixed demi-smile and a slightly rueful look in her eyes. Her hair is pulled back, topped with a small, close-fitting black hat, cocked to one side; a tweed jacket and over that, what appears to be a practical, short-haired fur complete the outfit. The blurb describes her as a “dedicated outdoorswoman” and indeed, a pack of Chatahoula leopard dogs and a shotgun could well be just outside the picture frame.

In the Forward, Land confesses that her father wanted a boy and “when I came along, he simply did the best he could with what he had.” This meant teaching her to tote a gun as soon as she was big enough, and to jab a fishhook into a worm “without fainting fits” at age four. From her cousin Gammon, she learned to play with baby alligators and “the more important maxims of life—to be free of fear and to do first things first.” (She was also a poet and folklorist. If you’re thinking they don’t make 'em like this anymore, you would be right.)

More importantly, from a cook’s perspective, Land developed a deep appreciation for “the groceries supplied by Mother Earth.” I suspect that she was a fine, confident cook. As she moved around the state, she made friends as easily with New Orleans chefs as bayou cooks; her intimate knowledge of Louisiana’s natural larder is staggering, and the mostly simple, traditional recipes give us a glimpse of an almost vanished culture. It is a snapshot in time, taken well before Prudhomme, Emeril and their cohorts began to dilute and, oddly, narrow our idea of Louisiana cookery.

Land’s five gumbo recipes include a Duck Hunters Camp Gumbo (using duck gizzards and livers) and a Creole Gumbo for Large Gatherings (105 pounds of raw shrimp, 52 minced onions, 115 pounds of crab meat, 3 bottles of Red Devil Sauce and so on.) But the recipe that caught my eye was just plain Gumbo, which she describes as “a pungent mixture, inherited from Africa and the West Indies.” Although any shellfish, fowl or game can be used as a base, you can’t go wrong with shrimp, crabmeat and oysters, the main ingredients in this one.

A few pointers about gumbo: To do it right, you must "first make a roux." This is the way countless Louisiana recipes begin. The roux--a mixture of slowly browned flour and butter--is what gives gumbo, stews and other dishes their rich flavor. It also serves to thicken the stock ever so slightly. You must, and I repeat must, make a roux in a well-seasoned cast iron pot or least a cast iron skillet. Otherwise, the flour will stick to the pan and burn before it turns the right shade of dark mahoghany. Stir with a wooden spoon and don’t try to hurry the browning. As Land remarks, “Every type of dish is cooked on a ‘slow’ fire. Time is meaningless, for Louisiana cooks know that qui va doucement va surement (going slowly is the secret of cookery).”

The stock that you use also contributes to the flavor of the gumbo—and here again, speed is not of the essence. Quoting a bayou cook, Land says, “Ma chere, the mo’slow the stock is cook the mo’bet’ it is,” But I cheated and used an aseptically packaged seafood stock which turned out to be full-flavored and nicely seasoned. You could also make a stock of shrimp shells—but for 2 quarts, you will need more than the shells from the one pound of shrimp in this recipe. In a pinch you could probably use homemade chicken broth.

As for the seafood, the recipe calls for shrimp, plus 2 cups of cooked crabmeat and a dozen oysters. The lump crabmeat I bought was so sweet and succulent that it almost overwhelmed the flavor of the other ingredients, so you might want to start with less and add more to taste. Unless you can lay your hands on some plump Gulf oysters, a dozen will not be nearly enough—I used close to a whole pint of smallish Chesapeake oysters.

The final touch is the file powder. First made by the Choctaw Indians on Bayou Lancombe, file (pronounced fi-lay) comes from the dried, powdered leaf of the sassafras tree. The word derives from the French verb filer, which means “to spin into threads” and describes the powder’s thickening action. File has a sweetish, aromatic taste which has been described as a cross between thyme and savory. It adds flavor and also serves as a thickener; you don’t need much—just a generous pinch or so.

Peppery Louisiana Seafood Gumbo
(adapted from Mary Land’s Louisiana Cookery)

To serve 4:

Ingredients for the gumbo:

4 large onions, peeled and finely chopped
1 stick of butter
2 tablespoons flour
2 quarts seafood stock
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 cup sweet green pepper, finely chopped
1 cup celery, finely chopped
3 bay leaves
4 teaspoons dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste
Salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 pound raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
1-1/2 to 2 cups cooked crabmeat
1-1/2 cups fresh oysters
File powder, to taste (see note)
Cooked white rice

Method:

1. In a cast iron pot or skillet, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the onions, and sauté until they are soft and translucent. Do not brown.
2. Slowly sprinkle the flour over the onion mixture and using a wooden spoon, stir it into the butter and onions. Continue to stir gently until the roux takes on a rich, dark brown color. This may take 20 to 30 minutes. Lower the heat if necessary to keep it from burning.
3. While making the roux, heat the stock until it is very hot. When the roux has acquired a dark brown color, pour in the hot stock (If you are using a skillet to make the roux, transfer it to a medium stock pot when it is done and then add the stock). Stir until the roux and the stock are combined.
4. Add the other ingredients except for the seafood, file and rice. Stir and simmer very, very slowly for 2 hours. Then add the shrimp and simmer gently for 20 minutes. Add the crab and simmer a few minutes. Toss in the oysters and simmer until their edges curl, just a minute or two.
5. Serve hot in a big bowl, as Land instructs, with “boiled rice piled high on one side.” Sprinkle with file powder to taste and serve. To accompany the gumbo you need nothing more than a crisp green salad, very lightly dressed in oil and vinegar, and a glass of wine.

Note: Zatarain and Rex gumbo file can be ordered from www.cajunsupermarket.com and it is also available at www.penzeys.com. Be sure you are buying pure ground sassafras leaf, as there are also flavored versions of file. Whole Food sells Gumbo File flavored with thyme, for example.

My 1986 edition of The Joy of Cooking, incidentally, states that file has been banned as a carcinogen by the FDA. Now we know that, although the roots and bark of the sassafras tree do contain the carcinogen safrole, the leaves do not. File is safe to use, especially in the very small quantities called for in this recipe. Under no circumstances use tapioca flour to thicken the gumbo as Joy suggests.

Early crocus tommasinianus in bloom--and spring is in the air.

I'm off to Paris for a few days. I'll be visiting a few stellar spice shops, inhaling rare perfumes, and tasting spice-scented truffles from Patrick Roger, patisserie from Sadaharu Aoki and more. There'll be notebooks to fill from Papier +, talk with spice merchants, dinner at Le Chateaubriand and maybe a lunch at Le Comptoir, plus I must see Jean Nouvel's new Musee du Quai Branly. Reviews have been mixed, but I can't resist the idea of a vertical jardin of 15,000 plants from around the globe.

It's raining today, but for me, Paris will always be the City of Light.

On a wet morning, a visitor strolls past Patrick Blanc's chic
"mur vegetal" at the Musee du Quai Branly, Paris' newest and
most controversial museum.

I’m standing on the wet sidewalk outside the Musee du Quai Branly, Jean Nouvel’s controversial museum for the tribal arts that opened in 2006. And though the elegant girders of the Eiffel Tower soar above the museum’s boxy facade, my eyes are riveted to the lush vegetal wall just inches from my nose. This brilliant tapestry of ferns, mosses, and spiky-leaved plants in shades of lime, gold and burgundy shimmers in the light morning mist. In all there are 15,000 plants growing vertically up an exterior wall facing the Seine, like a rain forest magically tossed into a grey urban setting.

The mur vegetal is the work of Patrick Blanc, a 54-year-old botanist whose vertical gardens can also be found at the French Embassy in India and in the inner courtyard of Pershing Hall, a chic hotel in the 8th arrondissement. Blanc was Inspired by his travels through Malaysia, Thailand and other parts of Asia—yes, there he is, au naturel, on his website, coyly posed in a pool of water behind some branches--where he discovered colonies of plants growing in grottos and on cliffs, toppled tree trunks and the crevices of fallen boulders. To create similar eco-systems, he devised complicated structures of felt and plastic sheeting held in place by metal frames that can be mounted on the walls of urban buildings. The plants need no soil, but receive water and nutrients through a drip irrigation system.

So far the museum’s jardin seems to have survived the rigors of a chilly Paris winter, though there are a few bald spots. But children adore it—right now a tiny blond boy in miniature designer jeans is ecstatically patting a patch of emerald green moss—and grownups, myself included, are craning their necks upwards to gaze in awe at this pointilliste jungle.

The Eiffel Tower, just blocks away, looms over the museum's
modernist exterior. The architect was Jean Nouvel, who also
designed L'Institut du Monde Arab and the Fondation Cartier.

It’s somehow fitting that Blanc’s dreamy mur vegetal should be installed at a museum meant for the right side of the brain. The Branly has excited a lot of criticism, as much for its dark, confusing gallery spaces as for its alleged condescension to the indigenous cultures of Oceania, Asia, Africa and the Americas. One thing is quite clear: This is not a museum that I’ll be visiting in any kind of organized, linear fashion. As I ascend the gently sloping entrance ramp, with projected images of crashing waves, geishas and “one world” messages beneath my feet, I can tell that I’m leaving the rational world behind.

Take the snake, for instance. Architect Nouvel’s sinuous serpente is a low undulating wall, covered with buttery café au lait leather, encapsulating womblike banquettes and video screens running clips of enclosed gardens in North Africa or dancing tribesmen in New Guinea. It’s a place for dreaming, maybe sleeping, and I haven’t even gotten to the main galleries yet. And when I do, I don’t find spacious rectilinear halls that progress logically from one to another. Instead, corners are rounded, the atmosphere is dark and moody (think shades of terracotta red and purple), and objects lit by overhead spots emerge suddenly out of the darkness.

In this strange murky world, there are no paths with straight lines, but everything is somehow connected. A left turn and I’m in a covered passageway listening to a gentle high-pitched chant while gazing at a New Guinea funeral pirogue with a bonito reliquary (the bonito was the symbolic equivalent of a human head taken in a hunting expedition). Ten steps ahead I come upon a “forest clearing” populated by towering Melanesian ceremonial drums adorned with carved bird-like faces with frightening beaks. A right turn takes me to Siberia, where a heavily fringed shaman’s dress made of wild reindeer hide seems to gyrate in the air, even though the shaman himself is not there. Maybe just invisible. Then I enter one of several boites de musique ("music boxes") where I hear sitar music and see images of prayer flags and candles flickering on the Ganges, before drifting into a cramped room where I glimpse disturbing blank-faced masks from Mali through narrow slits in the wall.

All these treasures are grouped according to broad geographic regions, but the focus is really on each individual work. This allows the viewer to marvel at, say, a near life-size figure of a bare-breasted queen sitting on a lizard stool entirely covered with tiny, intricately patterned glass beads. She’s from Cameroon, made in the 19th century, and though the symbolism is undoubtedly important—all is explained on the accompanying placard—this “fragmentary” presentation allows you to contemplate the hand of the craftsman without cultural or historical baggage. This is a heretical attitude that few museums would espouse—probably not even the Branly--but it signals a refreshingly out-of-the-box approach to the museum experience.

As for me, I am besotted by an early 20th century Shan mask for the lead cow of a caravan traversing Myanmar’s Golden Triangle. Sprouting peacock feathers, it is studded with round mirrors and hundreds of tiny buttons. Just the sort of thing that might swim out of a vaguely hallucinogenic dream--not a bad way, actually, to view the Branly.

The Musee du Quai Branly is located at 37 quai Branly, Paris 75007. Telephone: 01 56 61 70 00. Website: www.quaibranly.fr. The highly praised restaurant, Les Ombres, is on the fifth floor and staff will not direct you to the elevator unless you have a reservation—helas, they were full the day I was there. Next time I'll call a week or two ahead. Telephone: 08 26 10 08 45.

For more on Patrick Blanc, see the very interesting website for Echo Studio, a Chicago based architectural firm dedicated to sustainable building. I bought two of Blanc’s books at the Branly shop: Follies Vegetales (Editions Chene, 2007) which is full of photographs of natural murs vegetaux from his travels in Asia and Le Bonheur d’Etre Plante (Maren Sell Editeurs, 2005).

At Pierre Herme, an assortment of exotically flavored macarons: among them,
olive oil and vanilla, green tea and chestnut, and hazelnut and white truffle.

It’s a bright cool spring afternoon. In St. Germain des Pres le tout Paris is out for a stroll and, oops--there’s a longish line snaking out of Pierre Herme’s glossy boutique on Rue Bonaparte. But isn’t there always? Black clad sylphs, many of them Japanese, are whiling away the minutes until they can slip through the narrow door, chatting on ceil phones. I’m obsessing over the elegant sweets displayed like jewels in a pair of boxy Mondrian-esque windows.

Inside: Single origin chocolate bars to the right, and to the left, fruit-topped patisserie, twinkling against the gleaming chocolat noir walls. But, like almost everyone else in line, I’m here for Herme’s “fetish” macarons, which are arranged in colorful rows at the far end of the counter. Hmmm…what to choose? Azur, filled with tart citrus-infused dark chocolate? Pink Rose, a double shot of damask rose flavor? Or Mosaic, pale green pistacho filling sandwiched between copper-hued biscuits?

The line shifts restlessly behind me. ‘Un assortment?” asks the helpful sales girl. She’s clearly used to dithering Americans. “Douze, s‘il vous plait,” I say. Wielding a pair of tongs, she quickly plucks 10 delectable flavors, doubling up on Rose and Mutini, a nouvelle creation I know Alexandra will love.

Eating an Herme macaron is not unlike falling into a deep, luxuriously soft feather bed. When you bite into it, the shell dissolves like a cloud, melting instantly into the voluptuous filling—which might be an unctuous crème or luscious chocolate ganache, often exotically flavored. Less than two inches in diameter, each can be devoured in a few fleeting bites.

Here’s what’s in my box—and a few smudged tasting notes.

Azur: Chocolate biscuit, yuzu-scented dark chocolate crème. Bittersweet chocolate lightened with citrus. Sweet and tart, rich, balanced.

Mosaic: Vanilla biscuit with irridescent coppery finish, bright green pistachio crème. Cinnamon-dusted. Very appealing, despite its extraterrestrial appearance.

Caramel a la fleur de sel: Golden biscuit, buttery caramel, just a whisper of sea salt. Deeply seductive.

Mogador: Passion fruit-infused milk chocolate ganache. Luscious. A tropical paradise by way of Gauguin. Why did I not buy more?

Marron et The Vert Matcha: Chestnut-flavored biscuit, green tea-infused crème and marron glace. Subtle autumn flavors. Sweet, a little grassy.

Rose: Rose biscuit, rose crème. Voluptuous scent of antique damask rose. Like eating an intensely perfumed flower. I adore this one.

Chocolat: Chocolate biscuit with bittersweet chocolate ganache. Classic, sumptuous.

Truffe Blanche & Noisette: Italian hazelnut biscuit, white truffle cream. Earthy, nutty flavors. Terrific pairing.

Huile d’Olive & Vanille: Slightly acidic extra virgin olive oil preamble, with a sweet vanilla crème second act. Experimental. Odd.

Mutini: Biscuit with tiny shreds of rich coconut, milk chocolate ganache, again with coconut. Heavenly, but only till mid-March.

Pierre Herme, 72 rue Bonaparte, Paris 75006. Telephone: 01 43 54 47 77. For more locations and information, see www.pierreherme.com. I loved reading Mari Coyne’s “Consuming Pierre Herme” at www.globalchefs.com.