Hello, side-door listeners. It is March, and in honor of Women's History Month, we've decided to share one of our favorite episodes from last year.

Now, to be clear, we don't just celebrate important women in March.

But I will take any excuse to talk more about Lena Richard and her incredible career.

And of course, her famous gumbo and her oysters and her dream melon.

Is anyone else getting hungry?

While the side-door team is off flamboying up some hot news stories for you, we're delighted to share again Lena Richard, America's unknown celebrity chef. Enjoy.

This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX. I'm Lizzie Pevani.

Okay. Well, I'm grabbing the cookbooks now as we speak, because I'm long overdue in making my gumbo.

Paula Rhodes is a lawyer, professor, and human rights advocate. She's also a really good cook.

Okay. On page 135 of her cookbooks, there is a brief description of making of the room since that's a base for a lot of the recipes, not just the gumbo.

Paula lives in Denver now, but she grew up in New Orleans. And when I called her up, she was patient enough to walk me through a New Orleans classic, her grandmother's gumbo recipe, starting with the room.

Okay. Your heat's set. Hi, heat. Then you add flour. You stir until light brown. If you overcook it, then when you add liquids and stuff, it's not going to come out the right consistency.

How do I know when it's ready? Add onions.

Okay. Here we go. And continue to stir until onions and flour are a golden brown. So that's her basic recipe for a roof.

Paula learned to cook from her mother, who in turn learned from Paula's grandmother, Lena Richard. Lena Richard died when Paula was just a baby, but Paula's heard lots of stories about her grandmother from her family, but also from relative strangers.

Because when Lena Richard was alive, just about everyone in New Orleans knew her cooking. She called herself a catarice, but she was so many things that it's hard to really determine what to call her.

This is culinary historian Jessica B. Harris. I mean, she was such a trailblazer, but an unknown trailblazer.

A woman of color in the Jim Crow South, Lena Richard defied the place assigned to her based on her race and gender to become a celebrity chef.

She had her own televised cooking show more than a decade before Julia child. She faced down barriers we still grapple with as a nation today to claim her place as a culinary icon.

This time on Side Door, Lena Richard's extraordinary story and my very ordinary attempt at her famous gumbo after the break.

Hey, there's Side Doorables. If you listen to Side Door, which I know you do because you're listening to my voice right now, you probably like stories about history, science, art, and culture, which is why I am extremely excited to announce a brand new podcast from Smithsonian Man.

It's called There's More To That and it's hosted by Chris Clinic, who is right here in the studio now.

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