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Sassafras Leaves Give Flavor to Soups as Filé Spice

Posted by wilde on October 31st, 2008 — Posted in Food, Vegetable

Ever hear of Gumbo? If you’ve not been to Louisiana, maybe you’ve never tried it or even heard of it. Gumbo is an African word for ‘okra’, which is a green vegetable that is mainly raised and consumed in the Southeastern U.S.

Personally, I’m not very fond of okra. Ok, I can’t stand that slimy stuff, and that’s always been my experience with okra, unless it’s been in a “gumbo”, or thick soup. Okra thickens the gumbo which also has some type of meat, chicken and sausage usually, in a seafood broth made from cooked shrimp heads or shells, and a few veggies, like tomatoes, peppers, celery, onions and garlic.

It turns out that Creole folk adopted a custom from the Native American Choctaw tribes, who added crushed sassafras leaves to soups as a flavoring and thickening agent. Today, the spice from ground sassafras leaves is called Filé, pronounced fee-lay. When Filé powder or filé spice is used in gumbo-style soup, it may be called Filé Gumbo.

I think we must have used a Yankee version of filé this summer when we made ketchup. We hung sassafras leaves along with some pickling spice in a cheesecloth bag in the pot as we cooked down tomatoes, peppers and onions into ketchup – which is another story, Making Homemade Ketchup.

Filé spice consists of crushed, dried Sassafras leaves. It’s not hard to make it at home, provided that you can find some Sassafras. Go to any state forest in the Eastern U.S. and ask a ranger where you can see some Sassafras trees. Chances are great that you’ll find Sassafras at the edge of the woods. Sassafras leaves are unmistakable, so never fear!

If you’re not into going into the woods or if you have no desire to make your own filé, of course you can order Gumbo Filé online.

Harvest the young, green leaves on the August full moon for the best flavor. Seeing that it’s October as I’m writing this and the fall colors are well upon us, it’s not a good time to harvest Sassafras leaves for making Filé spice. I don’t think I’ll find too many green leaves, and certainly not young leaves, but I’ll give it a try and report back later on how it goes.

Once you harvest the Sassafras leaves, they are to be dried out of the sun for at least a week. Longer is fine. Once the leaves are harvested the making of the filé can happen at a much later time.

Crush the leaves with your hands and remove all the bits of stems. Grind leaves into powder using a coffee grinder or a spice mill or get busy crushing with a mortar and pestle. The crushed dried sassafras leaves should be a green color, not brown as you will find in some stores.

If you are going to buy filé in a store, check the label first. Some other spices or ground dried herbs are passed off as filé, hence a light brown color.

Store the powdered filé in an air-tight container. A spice jar works great so it can be passed around the table and sprinkled on soup to each one’s taste.

Can’t add filé during cooking because it makes the soup stringy and that’s downright undesirable. When soup is taken off the heat you can add filé or offer it in a shaker bottle at the table so that way everyone can add as much as they like. Just don’t add filé to the pot if the pot is going to be re-heated on the second day!

Gotta go check for some green Sassafras leaves!

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Orange Fruiting Lily-of-the-Valley

Posted by wilde on October 31st, 2008 — Posted in Vegetable

Saw something the other day that I had never seen before…a fruiting Lily-of-the-Valley! We’ve had Lily-of-the-Valley growing at the edge of the lane for a couple years now. A neighbor gave away a large clump of it when they were changing their landscaping.

I was happy to see that the Lily-of-the-Valley grew well enough in our poor soil to multiply. We have clay and rocks for soil here up on the mountain ridge. Any planting we do is prefaced with amending the soil with spagnum moss, compost or any other soil I can get my hands on.

When planting the Lily-of-the-Valley the first year I split the large plant into two clumps. The second year the clumps were larger and had more of the linear foliage. This year new plants popped up about 2-3 feet from the original plants, probably by runners as the new plants appeared in the direction that the original plant was spreading.

Lily-of-the-Valley spreading out by runners from the original plant. Photo taken 16OCT08.

Leaves of Lily-of-the-Valley have parallel veins, which is a characteristic showing that is it a monocot, kind of like very large blades of grass. Each plant has two leaves and next to those two leaves arises a singular flower stalk.

The flowers dangle from the arching flower stalk. If you can get close enough to the flowers breathe deeply – their sweet scent is delicious. Expect it to flower from early to late May, at least that’s when Lily of the Valley blooms here in Central Pennsylvania.

Arching stems of white sweet flowers of Lily-of-the-Valley. Photo taken 6MAY06.

The blossoms last for a long week, perhaps two weeks or more until the flowers fade to brown and fall off the stem. A few stems are always clipped off and placed in a small glass of water so we can enjoy the sweet scent indoors.

A couple weeks ago I noted that a single flower had been fertilized and produced a mature fruit. The fruit looked like a miniature pumpkin, fairly round and bright orange.

Orange fruit of Lily-of-the-Valley on the arching flower stalk. Photo taken 16OCT08.

Perhaps the plant had fruited before and I never noticed. I presumed it multiplied mostly by runners as I had seen evidence of that already. I never looked for fruit on it before, but you know I will again next year.

Have you seen Lily-of-the-Valley producing miniature pumpkin fruit like this?

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