Gumbo: A Nigerian and American Southern Comfort Food Style

- My name is Toyin Alli, and I brought chicken and beef sausage gumbo, which blends my heritage, Nigerian and Southern roots.

My dad is Nigerian, my mom is African American.

He took about five recipes from Nigeria to the US.

And we circulated those five Nigerian recipes a lot on our dinner table.

But we often would mix a lot of southern comfort food with Nigerian food.

And a light bulb went off when I visited New Orleans.

I realized that that was actually the food that was the marriage between the two of them.

So there's okra in there.

There's ground smoked shrimp, which I feel like are takeaways from West African food, and then there's chicken and beef sausage and rice that to me, is kind of more like my mother's southern comfort food.