Marya D.

I remember being in a linguistics class many years ago and being asked to define, in real time, Table and Chair. Every single person in the room knew precisely what a table and chair were, had a clear mental picture of what one should entail, but was completely stymied when it came to delineating limiting characteristics. The concepts occupy more of a loose range than a strictly proscribed limit. When you get right down to it. I suspect that most concepts are that way. You and I believe, when we are talking, that we both agree upon the limits of a concept, but that is rarely so, it's the central idea that we agree on, and the limits are subject to a case by case review. Primarily, I believe that a salad is composed of cold foods, tossed in a dressing rather than cooked in a sauce, but that may be just my perception. Marya

What you've got there is andouillette, It is the French original, that evolved into andouille. I'm guessing that Spanish Chorzo would be a better substitute. (Not Mexican, because of the opposite problem w/ the French; the Mexican is fresh, the Iberian is smoked.) This only makes sense to me as the word Okra comes from the west African for okra. but there are gumbos without okra as sure as there are those w/o crawfish. Those are where file is primarily used. I was once told by a gumbo cook that file and okra are never simultaneously used--it's one or the other only. As far as the red bell pepper is concerned, I knew a Louisianan who confessed that when she was growing up her family threw out the bell peppers that turned red because they thought they'd gone bad. Only goes to show you that "folk wisdom" is no better or worse than any one's set of random bits of knowledge. I've been firmly admonished by some "experts" that poultry and seafood are not to be mixed in a gumbo and that tomatoes are forbidden. I've seen these rules flouted a hundred times. But tomato has umami, how can that hurt? Good luck with your antipodean gumbo, Marya