Gumbo

The next recipe, a gumbo, is really a main course rather than a soup, and it makes good use of seasonal vegetables. I sometimes thicken the gumbo with filé powder, bought in America, which is the powdered dry leaf of the sassafras tree. One or two teaspoons of powder are mixed with a little water and stirred into the soup right at the end of cooking time and after the final seasoning. The soup should not be boiled after adding the filé, as it becomes stringy. Otherwise use okr