voices in food.
CREOLE PANTRY
Where to buy... You can get blue swimmer crabs from some fishmongers or from thefishsociety.co.uk (usually sold frozen) – they’re used here mainly to add flavour. If you can’t find any, use another variety of crab, sustainable Scottish langoustines or extra prawns – or even fresh crabmeat, adding it at the end. Find filé powder at Amazon and andouille sausage at franconian. co.uk, or use another smoked sausage such as Polish kielbasa.
A BIT ABOUT KESHIA The chef/owner of Caribe’ restaurant and Baruru Supper Club in Brixton celebrates the Caribbean’s diverse food culture and its influence all over the globe. Keshia’s menus are inspired by her travels and the food cooked by her grandparents, who emigrated to the UK from Montserrat and Barbuda in the Windrush era. Her writing focuses on culture and identity, exploring how heritage and history influence what we eat. Follow her on Instagram @sakarah_ and @caribe_UK
Gumbo is a beautifully complex dish that exemplifies the dynamic cooking of Louisiana, with influences from the many cultures that lived and settled there. The first written reference to the deeply flavoured stew of meat or shellfish – or sometimes both – was in 1764, but the recipe is undoubtedly much older. Its roots are West African, as its name derives from the word ‘ki’ ngombo’, meaning ‘okra’, which is a key ingredient.
During the trans-Atlantic slave trade, okra was one of the many foods that travelled on ships along the Middle Passage from Africa to the Americas from the 16th century – and numerous cooking traditions and recipes made that same journey. The base of many modern gumbo recipes is a roux (flour and fat or oil) cooked until dark, a technique that speaks to the historic French colonisation of Louisiana. The stew is thickened further by okra or sometimes filé (dried, ground sassafras leaves), a herb first used by Native Americans.
There are many variations, but two general styles: Creole and Cajun. The Creole version uses more seafood (shrimp, crab, crayfish and oysters) and tomatoes. The Cajun version doesn’t contain tomatoes and sometimes adds chicken and other meat. My gumbo recipe is more in the Creole style.
FOOD PHOTOGRAPHS: STUART WEST. FOOD STYLING: JESS MEYER. STYLING: LAUREN MILLER