Chicken & Sausage Jambalaya: Cookoff Worthy Contender?

Last weekend the Hubs & I went to the Sertoma Cajun Cookoff here in Springfield.  My awesome friend Tara got us two free tickets and I was just itching to see what was there.  I’ve thought about entering, but I wanted to check out my potential competition first.

I’m used the the Sertoma Club’s annual Chili Cookoff, which is MUCH bigger with hundreds of booths.  So I was surprised to see only about 20 booths at the Cajun Cookoff. All the same, there was a wide variety of choices, from Bananas Foster Crepes to “Cajun Mac & Cheese” to tiny crawfish pies, gumbo, jambalaya…and a few of those “errrrr” entries where they make something that’s halfway between gumbo & jambalaya and you’re NOT really sure which they were aiming for.
    
Clockwise from Top Left: Mini Crawfish Pie (yum); little-too-buttery shrimp & lobster…something (“gumbo” is my assumption, but y’all know how I feel about tomato-based gumbo); burnt roux gumbo (remember kids: if you’re making a roux from scratch, aim for the color of peanut butter, not coffee); a REALLY tasty chicken gumbo topped with fried okra; and too-blonde roux plus crunchy-rice chicken & sausage jambalaya…that for some reason also smelled like weed.  For reals.
It got me wondering:  If I enter, WHAT would  I enter?  There were no etouffees…but then again, I don’t have a “go to” etouffee recipe, and I don’t really want to deal with a full day of people asking me what “E-toofy” is.  There were only a few gumbos—but that chicken gumbo up there is a CONTENDER, I don’t think my recipe would beat it.  But I’m pretty sure I could beat the crunchy rice jambalaya…because after all, I have John Folse & his bible on my side.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 lb boneless skinless chicken, cubed
• 1 tsp Cajun seasoning
• 1 lb sliced andouille sausage
• 1 Tbsp dry roux (or liquid roux) - optional
• 1/8 cup olive oil
• 1 cup onions, diced
• 1 cup celery, diced
• 1/8 cup minced garlic
• 3.5 cups chicken stock/broth
• 1 cup sliced mushrooms
• 1/2 cup sliced green onions
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• salt & pepper to taste
• hot sauce, to taste
• 2 cups uncooked instant brown rice

DIRECTIONS:
In a large (5-6 qt) pot [cast iron, if you have it], brown your chicken in the olive oil.  Then stir in the andouille, reduce heat to medium, and cook for 10-15 minutes.

On top of that, add the dry roux, onions, celery, bell pepper & garlic.  Continue cooking until the veggies are all well caramelized.  Then add the chicken stock/broth/whatever, bring to a boil, the reduce to simmer for 15 minutes.  Now add the mushrooms, green onions, parsley, and stir well, and season to taste w/ S&P and hot sauce. 

Then add the brown rice, bring to a rolling boil, and then reduce heat to low, cover, and let cook for 15 minutes or until the rice is done.
Once everything’s cooked, remove from heat, stir and then re-cover to keep the steam in the pot until time to serve. Check flavors & season again to taste.

Makes about 8 servings. 

NutriFacts:
Calories 371.3
  Total Fat 17.2 g
  Saturated Fat 5.5 g
  Polyunsaturated Fat 0.3 g
  Monounsaturated Fat 0.4 g
  Cholesterol 54.4 mg
  Sodium 1,106.6 mg
  Potassium 289.4 mg
  Total Carbohydrate 36.8 g
  Dietary Fiber 3.4 g
  Sugars 1.8 g
  Protein 18.6 g

Cajun Stuffed Bell Peppers

ItshereitshereitsfinallyHEEEERE!
…okay.  I got that out of my system.  But yes, my free copy of the cookbook that my recipes were published in finally arrived at my house!

(It gets the place of honor on the kitchen easel for a while.)

See?  My name & stuff!  (well, my maiden name.  I submitted these recipes over a year before the wedding.

(Note: if you’re interested in getting a copy of this book, see the bottom of this blog post.)

So I figured it was only appropriate to make a recipe from my new cookbook! 
Not one of my recipes, mind you, because the ones that were selected for the book were already done on this blog back in 2008-2009.
I’ve been craving stuffed bell peppers, so I flipped through the book & sure enough, a lovely lady named Jill from Baton Rouge had submitted her recipe for that very dish.
Jill’s recipe doesn’t use tomatoes, which a lot of recipes do.  I personally like to have tomatoes in my dishes because a) canned tomatoes are an inexpensive way to add some nutrition to dishes, and b) I love tomatoes.  However, I really wanted to be true to the original recipe & give it a whirl.

Ingredients:
4 large red or green bell peppers, cut in half lengthwise & cored
1 lb 93% lean ground beef or turkey
2 slices bacon (optional) – we didn’t have any bacon on hand, so I used 1.5 tbsp bacon grease, which we ALWAYS have on hand
2 stalks celery, diced
1/2 large onion, diced
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp Cajun seasoning
1 tsp Louisiana Gold hot sauce (not in the original recipe—I added this for more heat & flavor)
1/3 cup grated parmesan or romano cheese
1/4 cup skim milk (original calls for half & half, but we didn’t have that)
1/2 cup italian seasoned breadcrumbs
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 cup cooked rice (we like to use brown rice)

Directions:
Okay, the prep for this dish can be a little labor intensive, so you may want to enlist some help, otherwise there’s a lot of pots to balance.  I had my wonderful husband prep the peppers & do the dicing for me.

(We didn’t use all that celery, he was just cutting up the rest for me to take to work as snacks.)

Once your prep work is done:
First: Cook your rice. Also, preheat your oven to 350.
Second: In a separate pot, boil water & then drop in your bell pepper halves.  Boil for about 4-6 minutes. Afterward remove them w/tongs and place them on a paper towel covered plate, upside down to drain out the excess water.



Third: In a skillet, brown your meat.  Because the beef (or turkey if you choose to use it) is so lean, the addition of the bacon (or bacon grease, in our case) really helps add flavor and a little bit of fat which this dish needs to cook everything without scalding or burning the veggies.  And you’re going to end up with 8 servings, so it’s a pretty piddly amount of fat when it gets portioned out.
Then add the onions & celery & cook for 5-10 minutes, or until the veggies are tender. Remove from heat, then add the remaining ingredients, including the rice, and stir until well combined.  Taste for seasoning and add more spices if needed.

Fourth: Put the peppers into a lightly sprayed glass baking dish (9x13 should work if you’re using 4 peppers—if you only make a half batch, an 8x8 square should probably do) with the hollow sides up, and scoop the filling mix into the peppers.  Portion it out evenly between the peppers, if it mounds up a bit from the top, that’s okay.
Then sprinkle a little bit of extra grated cheese across the tops.

Finally: Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes or until the cheese starts to brown.

One half is a serving.  Makes 8 servings.  Serve with a side salad or steamed veggie, and a hot roll.
This recipe turned out REALLY well.  The peppers were perfectly tender and the meat was really well seasoned.  As you can probably tell from the pics, we only had 3 peppers on had, so we actually had leftover filling.  So I mixed some leftover pasta sauce (So I got my tomatoes after all!) into that for meals later on this week.  It was really tasty both ways.  I might like to try it again some time with the pasta sauce or tomato paste mixed in, as I think it would help as a binder.

Nutrition facts:
Calories 202.8
Total Fat 10.1 g
Saturated Fat 2.1 g
Polyunsaturated Fat 0.5 g
  Monounsaturated Fat 1.6 g
  Cholesterol 7.2 mg
  Sodium 288.5 mg
  Potassium 187.7 mg
  Total Carbohydrate 10.6 g
  Dietary Fiber 1.2 g
  Sugars 1.0 g
  Protein 19.1 g
 
As noted above, this cookbook is currently available on Amazon!
Thanks for reading guys!  And happy cooking!

Published??!?!??!?!!?!

Once upon a time (2009), when this blog was still in its infancy over on Livejournal.com, I was contacted by a gentleman named Kent Whitaker who told me he liked the blog and asked if I would be willing to share a couple recipes for a cookbook he was working on. So I gleefully submitted three of the first recipes I ever made for this blog (sweet potato muffins, "cheaters" red beans & rice, and a catfish dish w/ mustard sauce & crab-boiled veggies). Then I pretty well forgot about his request.

Today, I was cleaning out my inbox, and I found Mr. Whitaker's original email. Which left me wondering if he had ever succeeded in getting his book published.

So I did some Googling, and lo & behold, "Louisiana Hometown Cookbook", co-authored by Kent Whitaker and Sheila Simmons, was published back in 2010.



A little more Googling and it seems that all three of my recipes were in fact used in the book!


(Not to copy of my friend Jo, but..."It's a major award!!!")

I'm a little disappointed that I never got a follow up email once it was published, but it's still FREAKING COOL to find out now! To just wake up one day & realize your name is in print in some cookbook? I feel so famous!!!! ;)



...I wonder if I'm entitled to ask for a free copy.... :D

Cajun Antique: 1971 Time Life Cookbook.

Our local library was having a massive used book sale this past week, so I had to hit it up...thousands of books for a dollar each? Count me in.

My prize of the day was this:



A 1971 Time Life Acadian & Creole Cookbook. I have several of the books in this series (Germany, Classic French, Austria, Southern, etc.---yes, I collect cookbooks. It's a little quirk.) but didn't know this one existed.

The thing I love about old cookbooks is that they're typically filled with things that no human being under the age of 35 would eat...lovely things like aspics and "salads" that step out so far beyond green, chicken, or tuna salads that they could fall off the edge of the horizon. My friend found a Betty Crocker "Meat Cook Book" that showed some sort of casserole that actually had a crust make of hotdogs:


Oh Betty....what have you DONE????
(the fact that my friend is a vegetarian made it all the more gruesome.)

But as I sat at home flipping through the pages of that Acadian/Creole cookbook, I saw only one or two items that aren't still commonplace in Southern Louisiana (one of those things being stuffed ponce, which might ACTUALLY still be somewhat common at boucheries, or a party built around a hog roast where dishes are made from EVERY part of the pig):


But the majority of the gorgeous full page photos, while a bit dated, still show the dishes which DEFINE Louisiana cooking, even 40 years after the publishing of this book, because they were around for a couple hundred years BEFORE the cookbook ever came about.

And the lovely thing about these Time Life books is that they're 50% cookbook, 50% cultural history lesson, this one in particular written by a New Orleans native, and his love for the food of his state jumps out from the pages at you.

"Cafe brulot and its counterpart cafe diable...seem to fuse one's taste buds so that one's tongue retains the meal's bouquet for the rest of the evening. In my friend's kitchen, I too had a taste of cafe brulot after dinner. It melted the bright edges of my vision until the guests who rose from the table and passed through the distant doorway dissolved into dream figures that floated and finally faded."

Aside from recipes, there's a whole chapter on the traditions of Mardi Gras:


Not to mention detailed instructions on exactly how to peel a crawfish:


I'm itching to cook something from this book, but can't decide---so I'm letting you, my few but fabulous readers, vote!

So...what shall it be?

Eggs Hussarde? (Had this at Brennan's for brunch once and fell in love...)


..or...

Traditional bread pudding?


...or....

One of these stuffed beauties? (alas, I can only do the chicken-stuffed tomatoes or the ham-stuffed eggplant...the other (top right) is shrimp-stuffed mirliton, and I can't get mirlitons here in Missouri....but I could possibly switch those around a bit & do a shrimp-stuffed eggplant.)



There are MANY other recipes in the book I'd like to try, but we'll start with one of these three.

Leave your vote in the comments section!!!

PS--Saving this page for Mardi Gras 2012...