Shrimp and Crab Gumbo

This is a big, wonderful, messy meal to serve on one of the first cool fall nights, when crab and shrimp are still plentiful but the oysters aren’t yet good. Louisiana may claim gumbo, which is a West African word for okra, but in fact okra, a member of the genus Hibiscus, entered South Carolina with the slave trade long before Louisiana was settled by Europeans. Lowcountry gumbo eschews the filé powder of the Louisiana version.