Transcript: Gumbo With Cities On Fire

Dinner with the band
Episode “Gumbo”

Sam: How you doing, I am Sam and this is dinner with the band and today I am lucky enough to be with really good friends of mine. Cities on fire, a Brooklyn based band, yes they are close to my heart. This is TJ, Dominique, and this is Gary. They are going to be hanging out with us today we are going to be cooking Shrimp Gumbo. We are doing gumbo today because of Dominique actually. Dominique is going to probably actually school me on Gumbo. I am just going to pretend to make it.
Dominique: Yeah I already pointed out you don’t have celery so…
Sam: I told him I swapped it up; we are going with carrots instead.
Dominique: Sam likes to do things different so.
Sam: Wait what do you call the trinity?
Dominique: The trinity yeah, onions, celery, and bell pepper.
Sam: Yeah, so I am doing onions, carrot and bell pepper. I am from Jacksonville, he is from Mississippi.
Dominique: There you go, and you’re going to eat it like it.
Sam: We got these sick ass prawns from china town. Which uh, they are kind of big. Do you ever use these?
Dominique: You should let Gary; I never got that fancy with my gumbo.
TJ: We never ate those at our Jewish holiday dinners.
Sam: Aw there did you have any of these?
TJ: Are they kosher?
Sam: The andouille? Alright lets uh, you know what we’re going to clean these damn shrimp. So what’s the deal, what do you guys eat? You cook at home?
TJ: I like to call it garbage plates. I take whatever what was in the Tupperware, and just throw it in a pan. Sometimes it is tasty. Sometimes you invent new crayola crayon colors.
Sam: You guys all know this obviously but this guy has quiet a big back patio and we do crab boils.
Dominique: Crab boils, crawfish boils.
Sam: It ends up being way too many people and nobody brings any beer.
Dominique: And I got new neighbors downstairs and they don’t know what’s about to happen to them.
Sam: Alright so what we are going to do now is we are going to start the shrimp stock. We are going to hit it with a splash of oil and then we are going to hit it off with shrimp heads. We are going to cook the shit out of these. See how red they get. We are going to let these go for a few minutes then we are going to cover them with water and cook for 20 or 30 min. I would let them go for hours but we are getting kind of hungry. Alright so that’s pretty good, we are going to go ahead and cover these with water.
Dominique: Snap, crackle pop.
Sam: That’s how we do.
TJ: I like when the eyes pop.
Sam: You like when the eyes pop? Now what are we going to do. You know what we are going to start the roux now, 2 cups of flour and 2 cups of butter. It’s pretty much what thickens a gumbo. What we are going to do is we are actually going to melt butter. There are a few different types of rues. You can do a brown roux or you can do a red roux. We are going to do a brown roux. It is a lot easier to just put it into a really hot oven, because it is easy to burn it. You go Noizet, which is kind of tan. And then it goes brown. And then all of a sudden it will burn in a second.
We are going to stir in the flour. See that? What do you know about that? I can’t do it with a drum stick. I could eat the shit out of a drum stick. I like a leg. Now it is going to go in the oven, between three fifty and four hundred. I am going to blow your mind now; we are going to make rice.
We have a cup of just regular grain rice. You know, normal run of the mill type shit. And we cover it with a cup and a half of water. And then we are going to boil it.
TJ: He can do that.
Sam: Can you handle that? You know what. We are going to throw some butter in there, add a little bit of salt before we cook it. Give me a second.
Dominique: You know my mom’s Pilipino, so we grew up eating a lot of rice. We had one of those big ass rice machines. I swear it was like this tall. It had different settings like you know, like a cup, like five cups, like ten cups. And you go up to it and you hit it and it was like shhhh. You know all this rice would come out into a bowl and you would cook it like that.
Sam: I got to learn that. Alright so the roux is in the oven. We got the stock working and we have our rice cooking. So what we are going to do now is we are going to chop the vegetables for the gumbo. I have four of these small carrots; we are going to have a bell pepper. We already have half an onion chopped. We have 2 garlic cloves chopped. We also have some okra. And then we are going to put a couple of tomatoes in. They are just going to get chopped.
Dominique: Hey but I went to that, what was that? NASCAR place that you… No wait that a different place.
Sam: That’s Daytona man.
Dominique: That’s Daytona. Dud I went on a run with like this dude
Sam: You went on a run, what were you running moonshine?
Dominique: Naw this dude I knew. That’s that car, that car issue.
Sam: What is it?
TJ: Like a stolen car or something.
Sam: You’re thinking of a different issue.
Dominique: That’s something else shh.
Gary: We just finished, we had moonshine in our freezer.
Sam: Oh Tim tried; oh that guys got some white lightning too.
Dominique: He was like, he was like, and you can’t drink this by itself, because it might melt your inside.
Sam: No yeah he told me that and I looked over and you had already finished your cup.
TJ: I loved the time we went in there and I didn’t even know really where you worked.
Dominique: Yeah you know you were at WD50 at the time.
TJ: And the first time I went in there, me and Dom were waiting for you. And you came out and you got a standing ovation from everyone in the restaurant. And you were like thank you, thank you.
Dominique: Oh yeah, oh yeah. It was a bus from somewhere.
TJ: and they came to try all the desserts. And when you came out and they were in there and they were like…
Sam: I went to say hi to these guys and everyone stood up and clapped. I was like…
TJ: And we were like this guy is a legend!
Dominique: There were like thirty people and they were like aaaaahhhh.
Sam: I remembered that, and it has never happened again.
TJ: You were like this isn’t regular occasion.
Sam: But you got to see that.
TJ: Yeah.
Sam: So the roux is done. That will do, that is exact color you want right there. It’s kind of red. The more you cook a roux, the less it will thicken the actual gumbo. But the more flavor you will get. So it’s kind of a, that’s why we do the okra, and the andouille. It helps it out. So now we are going to take our shrimp heads and bodies and…
Dominique: You know when I cook it I leave it in for like three hours.
Sam: Well when you get a show that fine you do what you want. Listen when I come over to your house, you can tell me how you’re doing it.
Dominique: Alright then.
Sam: Brunch with the band.
Dominique: I am just saying. That’s the sister show. There we go. Alright we are going to turn the roux back on. So we are going to add the garlic to the roux, we need some onions.
Dominique: And then um peppers?
Sam: Uh we are going to let these go for a bit. We are going to let these clear up.
Dominique: Whiskey it.
Sam: I don’t know if you want the whiskey this close to me. Alright so now what’s going to happen is we are going to add vegetables.
TJ: Yeah, smells so good. You always wonder on these cooking shows everyone’s going, it smells so great. But this does smell really good.
Sam: The dollar menu. I am going to need you guys to chip in a buck each way because this shit is expensive. No? Alright so now we are just going to cover it with our shrimp stock.
Dominique: Yeah the thing he stuck his finger in.
TJ: He sticks his finger in everything.
Sam: Alright that’s probably enough. We don’t to add too much. We will keep some around though. Alright so stocks in, we are going to let this cook for twenty five or thirty five minutes, before that though we are going to add some Cayenne pepper.
Dominique: You know what I was actually thinking about bringing some liquid crab boil for you. But the shrimps got it.
TJ: That stuff is going to give it a good kick though.
Sam: Alright so we are also going to add some thyme, which I got some right here. Got too much thyme, I should have picked it before but I figured. And then we are going to add some of these bay leaves which I had lurking, bay leaves and anything just not too many. That’s three. Alright so we are going to put this on a low simmer for twenty five or thirty five minutes. And then I will be able to add the shrimps, and the skrimps, and the sausage and the okra. And the Filet powder, and then we will be good to go. And then we will season it with salt and pepper.
TJ: That’s going to be good.
Sam: Alright let’s do it. Alright so the gumbo is done, it is time for us to add our andouille sausage, and we are going to add the shrimp as well, and the okra, we have a full pot here. Now we will actually let this come back to a boil and add the filet powder kind of slowly. You guys better be hungry.
Dominique: Oh we hungry.
TJ: We will be able to eat.
Sam: Alright so filet is going to go in.
TJ: Wow that smells really, sassafras is really good.
Sam: So this is only going to cook for ten minutes and then we are going to serve it over rice and we are going to eat. Alright so the gumbos done, we will use a clean bowl for you guys because you are guest. We got the rice that we cooked earlier.
Dominique: Where’s them skrimps at?
TJ: There in there. Ah there we go.
Sam: And what we do is try to get some liquid on there and make it a little soupy. I don’t know how you eat your but I.
Dominique: We like it a little bit soupy.
Sam: You know what we are going to do as well, we are going to lurk this guy. Make it you now, a little mehicano. Alright there you have it. Shrimp gumbo from dinner with the band, and now cities on fire is going to perform for us. Live in the apartment. And we will see how that goes.
Dominique: We might burn the house down, break everything.