ROUSES_Fall2022_Magazine-low-res

the gumbo ball, and the overwhelming response from that was just incredible.

and all that …for Best Tasting (Savory): the deep-fried seafood gumbo balls!” We thought we should win that category, so I was satisfied. I accepted the award and went back to my seat. I was cool. But then they were like, “For Most Creative…the deep-fried seafood gumbo balls!” And everyone was like, “Dang! Oh my God!” We were blown away, and to make it even more sentimental, my mother had just passed away right before the contest started. My mother was a master chef, and one of her last recipes was working with me on the gumbo ball. She was bedridden, but she was my taste tester. She’d say, “Well, add this, take that out — do this, do that.” And the day we were going to do the photo shoot [for the contest] she passed away. Winning the contest — and to really win how we won — was a great way to honor her legacy as well.

SB: Tell me a little bit about what goes into the gumbo ball. How do you make it, and why do you think it was so popular? GP: I’m still trying to figure out why it’s so popular! I guess gumbo is just a very popular dish. The gumbo ball is very simple. It’s about the size of a golf ball, and you get two of them with an order. I came up with the concept one day when I was at Pappadeaux, eating gumbo. I was just like, “Hey, this could be a good idea!” When I’m visualizing a concept, I can usually see it. And I just saw it. I thought, I can do the rice. I can make a rice ball and use the roux to be an adhesive for it, and then we can add four different types of meat to it. So, I made it. It’s a rice ball filled with a roux to give it the seasoning and flavor, then we add the basic gumbo elements. Now in the roux, you do have the trinity — bell pepper, onion and celery — and also bay leaf and spices that go into it. Then we add in Gulf Coast shrimp, two types of crab meat — we do lump crab and blue crab — then andouille sausage and stewed chicken. I love crackers with my gumbo when I’m eating it, crackers and hot sauce. So, to top it off and make it really authentic, when I do the batter [for deep-frying] I combine bread crumbs with crushed saltine crackers. That means when you bite into it, first there’s a crunch, then you’re going to taste the roux; then you’re going to taste the rice; then you’re going to taste all the different types of meat and flavors. I have a niece, and she’s like our good luck charm. She’s our secret weapon. She’s the one who had the idea to put the wine popcorn in the contest a few years back. We had been doing catering and conces sions with it as a popcorn flavor, and to me, it’s normal — wine popcorn seems normal to me. But to everyone else, it’s like, “This is a very creative flavor!” So she told me to enter it because she thought it was very different and would win. I ignored her at first and said, “Oh, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” But I thought about it a little, and I said, “You know what, we’re going

to go with your pick.” And we ended up winning, so then the next year I was like, “So, what else you got in mind?” That’s the tradition now. I came up with the gumbo ball myself, and when I told her about it, she was like, “Stop. Don’t say nothing else. That’s what we’re going to go with.” And that’s what we did! She had an idea for the presenta tion, though, that we should make it look more like a deconstructed gumbo by adding a cup of roux on the side for the people to dip the gumbo balls in and really get the effect of a gumbo. We went with it, and then we added crackers and hot sauce for aesthetics. We were just at the kitchen table one day talking, and that’s how we came up with it. It seems simple to us, but everyone is always like, “Wow!” when they try it. We actually entered two items into the contest last year. We did the gumbo ball, and we did a lemon icebox pie ball. If I’m being honest with you, I was more focused on the pie ball than the gumbo ball. But once we entered the gumbo ball into the contest and everyone began to try it, I could see the enthusiasm. When we were at the contest finals and the celebrity judges got to try it, hearing their words and their reaction — it was just mind-blowing. SB: What are the finals of the Big Tex Choice Awards like when you know you have a dish that’s a real contender? GP: The crazy part about it is that we won two awards for the gumbo balls. We won Most Creative and Best Tasting (Savory). I wasn’t expecting it. It was awards time, and they were like, “And the winner is... then there was a drum roll

NO FOLSE MOVES ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT " Although extremely simple, it’s probably the toughest thing I teach to my culinary school at Nicholls State University,” John Folse told Epicurious in 2013. “The first thing I tell them is that everybody says equal parts of oil and flour, but not really. It depends whether you have a fat skin-on baking hen like I’m going to put in the pot to make a hen and andouille gumbo. The fat from the hen and the fat from the andouille cannot be absorbed by just one cup of oil and one cup of flour, so innately I need to trigger my mind to say a cup and a quarter of flour and a cup of oil, because that other quarter cup [of oil] will be extruded from the meats in the pot. I need to know that instinctively without thinking about it; otherwise, I’ve got an inch of fat on top of my gumbo and people will say, ‘What kind of roux is this? What kind of gumbo is that?’”

PHOTO BY ROMERO & ROMERO

42 ROUSES FAL L 2022