Jambalaya

After 15 months of flying back & forth between Houston & New Orleans, I sometimes find myself craving cajun/creole food on the weekends, so when the craving hit last Saturday, just 3 days after my return from a business trip to NOLA, I was one step ahead of the game with a pound a of andouille sausage and primed to make Jambalaya!

Our jambalaya started with us slicing our 1 pound link of sausage into 2 equal halves, as we only need 1/2 pound for our recipe.  The other half of the link got thrown into a vacuum bag and sealed using our Food Saver machine-a great investment and waste-avoider!  We have sealed and frozen everything from meat to bread to peaches.

Our 1/2 pound of sausage and 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts cooked earlier in the week, were the recipients of a dice that resulted in 1/2 inch pieces of meat.

While on the topic of chopping, allow me to introduce you to the Cajun Holy Trinity & the Pope!

All over Louisiana restaurants, home kitchens, and billboards advertising Louisiana grocery stores, the combination of diced green pepper, diced celery, and diced white onion is used as the base of virtually every dish.  The French call diced celery, diced white onion, and diced carrots a mirepoix, and since so much of Cajun/Creole cooking is rooted in French technique, it makes sense that the Holy Trinity mirrors the mirepoix, but making it regional, the addition of green bell pepper and the subtraction of carrots takes place.  Another local addition is garlic, and since there's a religious theme already going, the locals call garlic "The Pope" because a shelled clove of garlic mirrors the hat worn by the Pope.


After smashing & mincing our garlic, we heated 4 T. of EVOO in our Le Creuset dutch oven and sauteed our veggies for approx. 7 minutes over medium high heat, stirring pretty regularly.  While the veggies cooked, we mixed our chopped meat with 2 T. of thyme, 2 T. of onion powder, 2 T. of oregano, 2 T. of garlic powder, 2 T. of black pepper, 1 T. of cayenne powder, and 2 T. of paprika.

At the 7 minute mark, we added to the pot a can of diced tomatoes, 4 bay leaves, and a teaspoon each of hot sauce and worcestershire sauce and stirred the mixture of over medium heat for a couple of minutes.

Once the new ingredients were well mixed in, we dumped in 3/4 cup of brown, non-instant rice and slowly added in 3 cups of chicken broth, stirring constantly.  Once the all the broth was in, let the mixture cook over medium heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, but covered the pot after 10 minutes in an effort to thicken the mix.

At this point the rice was tender, and we added the meat to the pot and cooked it over medium low heat for 10 minutes.

The final dish was warm and flavorful, but not at all overly spicy given all of the spices that went into the dish.  The jambalaya also kept well in the refrigerator and made for a couple of easy week night suppers!


While I'll never claim to be K-Paul or Emeril, who's recipe served as the base for our dish, it's nice to know that we can always bring a taste of Louisiana to our kitchen!