Name: Gumbo Ya Ya
Yield: Makes 6 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: ½ cup vegetable oil; ¼ pound baked or boiled ham, cubed; 3 cups boiled white rice; 1 teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon dried thyme, crumbled; ½ teaspoon dried oregano, crumbled; 2 bay leaves; ⅓ cup all-purpose flour; 2 medium onions, chopped; 2 tablespoons filé powder (available in specialty food shops); Cayenne pepper to taste; ½ pound smoked sausage (like kielbasa), thinly sliced; ½ medium green bell pepper, seeded and chopped; One 2- to 2½-pound chicken; 1 garlic clove, minced

Preparation info

Makes
6
servings

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Glory of Southern Cooking

By James Villas

Published 2007

About

In the early 1970S, I was at Commander’s Palace in New Orleans the day that head chef Paul Prudhomme came up with this chicken-and-sausage gumbo and owner Ella Brennan was searching for a catchy name for it. “We wanted to offer a nonseafood gumbo in the restaurant,” Ella recalls today, “and when Paul created this one, I happened to be reading a political novel with ‘