Disney's "Healthy Gumbo"

            Last week, Disney posted a video recipe titled, “Tiana’s Healthy Gumbo” to the Facebook page for their 2009 animated movie, The Princess and the Frog. For those unfamiliar with the movie, Tiana, the central character, is an aspiring chef in early 20^th century New Orleans and, after some typically Disney princess shenanigans, winds up achieving her dream of opening her own restaurant. Playing off the themes of the movie and New Orleans’s rich culinary history, Disney offered its own healthier version of gumbo--one of the most beloved dishes in Cajun and Creole cuisine. The recipe, however, did not go over well with residents of the Crescent City and the Bayou State, who took to the internet to voice their disapproval of this "healthy gumbo." The vitriol prompted  Disney to pull the video from social media.  This fan edit of the video is a typical response. 

            Let's start by looking at what's objectionable about the recipe. Generally, you start cooking gumbo by making a roux. The roux, a mixture of flour and fat cooked until dark brown, gives the resulting dish a fatty, rich flavor.  It is possible to make a gumbo without a roux, through either the use of okra or the introduction of file powder, an herb made from the dried and ground leaves of a sassafras tree.  Generally though, the okra is cooked down at the beginning of the process, not added as one of a bundle of mostly unobjectionable ingredients—except for the absence of celery, one of the three vegetables that comprise the holy trinity of Cajun and Creole cooking. Why there’s no celery goes unexplained in the video.  The recipe really goes off the rails when it suggests adding kale to the gumbo. Kale? What does kale have to do with gumbo? At this point, we’ve all been indoctrinated into the cult of kale.  It’s super healthy! You can make kale chips! It goes great in soups! Just sauté it in a pan!  All of this is just trying to hide the simple truth that kale tastes awful. It’s only good when you hide it in other dishes so you don’t have to actually taste it.

Then we get to the other big problem of the recipe: adding a cup of cooked quinoa. Now this makes a certain amount of sense. If you want to swap out the rice, then quinoa is a logical substitute. It’s a healthy and hearty grain that has a lot more nutritional value than rice. Quinoa, however, has a similar history as kale. It’s become popular in recent years and every health food advocate, overeager vegan, or just annoying dieter has extolled its virtues at some point. You can’t go to a health conscious restaurant without seeing one (or generally both) on the menu.

Leah Chase: The inspiration for Tiana 

In order to figure out whether kale or quinoa are actual ingredients in gumbo, I consulted two sources. The first was John Besh’s My New Orleans Cookbook. Besh has built a New Orleans restaurant empire by through his love of Creole cuisine. Nowhere in the 5 different recipes Besh provides  for gumbo does he list kale as an ingredient. The second source was Leah Chase’s recipe for gumbo. Chase, the famed chef at Dooky Chase restaurant in New Orleans, was the inspiration for the character of Tiana in The Princess and the Frog. Back in the 1950s, Chase transformed the restaurant’s menu to reflect her family’s Creole recipes.  Over the decades the restaurant has been the center of Civil Rights activity and a center of African-American culture in New Orleans. If you want a cultural institution, Leah Chase and Dooky Chase are it. Looking at her gumbo recipe she never calls for quinoa. In fact, the recipe ends with the words “serve over rice.” 

We’re only left with one unmistakable conclusion, whatever that Disney dish is, it sure as hell isn’t gumbo.