In Trying Times, a Bit of Southern Comfort

An occasional series in which staff members share a recipe that we turn to time and again:

Bringing food to a house in distress is a mitzvah, a good deed. The gesture is always appreciated, but maybe even more so when home cooking is involved.

And that's where the cooks choose one of two options: (a) lasagna, or (b) anything but lasagna. The appeal of Plan A is obvious. Nobody doesn't like it, as the saying goes. Lasagna can be built from ready-made ingredients, or you can knock yourself out making sheets of pasta, simmering a red sauce, whisking a creamy bechamel and sauteing the leanest ground beef or farm-fresh vegetables, not to mention grating a hunk of aged Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

Having been on the receiving end of several simultaneous lasagnas, I go with Plan B.

My go-to dish came to me through a process. I baked, but found that sweets are not for everyone. I developed a kit system of sorts; that meant including a small set of instructions for meal assembly, which was complicated and, frankly, a little bossy by the time I covered all the details.

And then one year my sister-in-law delivered the answer. Her holiday gifts to us were frozen single-serving tubs of gumbo, each with a layer of rice at the bottom. She had married into a New Orleans family, raised three daughters in the suburbs just beyond the city and learned the importance of a good, dark roux. We've exchanged two decades' worth of cookbooks and culinary thingamabobs since then. To my mind, that gumbo package has never been topped.

I'd like to say that I tested many gumbo recipes before hitting upon the one included here. I certainly ate my fair share of variations. Truth is, I put my faith in the humble, spiral-bound cookbook of a character I'd never heard of. At least Jude W. Theriot of "La Cuisine Cajun" seemed to be somebody. (He is, I discovered, having churned out a library of Cajun cookbooks since 1983.)

Theriot offered lots of ways in that book to make gumbo. His chicken-and-sausage combo did it for me. The recipe looks scary-long, because most of what goes into the 10-ingredient seasoning mix for the chicken is also used to flavor the gumbo. I learned to leave out the okra, my concession to general consumption. (Sacrilege, I know, considering the dish's name means "okra." Don't write me.) I love the stages of it: roux, fragrant chicken pieces, burned bits and vegetables floating in a muddy liquid, the unique qualities of filé powder. You can't rush it, and there are no shortcuts. Hours later, it all morphs into silky richness, deepened by the smoky andouille, with the odd drumstick bone poking through. It's always a hit. It's a recipe people ask for and one that I make in large batches when the only need is a hungry party.

This is slow food, and that is why it has remained the steadfast comfort dish I carry. It takes attention and care, echoing what I hope to offer to those in trying times.

Recipe: Chicken and Sausage Gumbo