This dish was made in complete compliance with the recipe spelled out in my Gumbo Mother Dish Technique. Using the technique, you can mix and match your own seasonal selections. If you are interested in recreating what is pictured, I list the ingredients for you:

While the dry roux was hydrated simply with water, I used a quart of homemade shrimp stock as the base for the gumbo. A good seafood stock makes a special seafood gumbo.

A lot of gumbos are all about the proteins, but I like to keep mine relatively vegetable forward. I used a 12-ounce bunch of collards from Dancing Pines Farm. Any variety of kale would make a fine substitute. The collard stems were removed, finely diced and cooked with the aromatics. For the aromatics, I used a medium onion, a few ounces of frozen chili peppers I stowed away from the fall, and 4 cloves of garlic. I also used two white sweet potatoes (14 ounces by weight) from T5-Farms. Orange sweet potatoes would certainly be an option, but white sweet potatoes hold their form better, and they have a distinctive flavor that I think works well with everything else in this gumbo.

The combination of seafood was shrimp, scallops and white perch fillets. 12 ounces total. If you’re into a more protein forward dish, you can increase the amount of seafood. To stretch the moderate amount of seafood in the bowl, I split the shrimp in half lengthwise and quartered the scallops. The seafood came from Locals Seafood and Weaver Street Market. For me, a great smoked andouille sausage is key for the gumbo flavor profile. I used two links of my favorite made from whey fed pork from the farms of Chapel Hill Creamery. The gumbo was paired with simple brown rice, and some chopped scallions from Dancing Pines Farm.