Gumbo shouldn't be hard. Some people out there want to make it difficult and complicate the living shit out of it, but there really is no need. It's a rustic dish, with the Creole Trinity, meat, and okra. I can't say it's thickened with roux since the roux is cooked so dark there's little thickening power remaining, but I can say it's imbued with the rich, intriguing "Soul of the Swamp" by the dark roux.
Funny story from my past. OK, so maybe not as funny as disturbing.
I was working for this Aerospace company in Austin many years ago and they had a food service company that ran the onsite lunch room. They're a fairly large outfit out of France, as memory serves.
Fridays were always joyous because in addition to the last day of the week, they were also "Gumbo Fridays". It wasn't that the gumbo was particularly good, it wasn't. What it was, on the other hand, was a clearing house for leftovers.
My co-workers and I didn't notice it at first, until one of us pointed out the chicken in the gumbo was breaded. We didn't think much of it at the time until the day there were almond slivers floating in the gumbo and finally made the connection to the Trout Almondine I'd had on that Monday.
We were a twisted bunch, so we kept buying and eating it, looking forward to the day when the leftover lasagna would be floating around in there.
Several years after that, when I worked for a large PC manufacturer in Austin, I was working in the kitchens of that same food service company and can confirm, "The Gumbo of Disposal" was pretty much corporate policy
My gumbo, is made of all fresh ingredients, including chicken leg meat, stock from the chicken legs, dark roux made with bacon fat, okra, andouille, the Trinity, garlic, my own blend of Cajun seasoning and finished with file as is proper.
