How to make Jambalaya

Jambalaya is a staple in New Orleans cuisine. The word "jambalaya" was first printed in 1837 though the dish dates back long before that. There's an old wives tale that tells of the beginings of jambalaya.

A traveler was on his way through New Orleans when he stopped at a local inn. Due to the lateness of the hour there was little food left for the traveler. The owner of the inn called out to the cook, Jean, and told him to "throw something together." In the local dialect this would have been "Jean, balayez."

Which over time starting sounding more and more like jambalaya and there you have it. Of course then there's always the other version of how it came to be...

Ever heard of Paella? The rather ridiculously delicious dish from Spain that includes rice & a whole bunch of other stuff you "throw together." The spanish did settle this area for quite some time and that plus a little french influence, a lack of saffron and BAM! Jambalaya.

There is both a creole and a cajun version. Today we'll be making the cajun version which is also known as brown jambalaya. (No tomatoes, unlike it's sibling the creole version which is known as red jambalaya.)

Here we go...

Rough amounts of what we use are as follows:

3 medium boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1lb of andouille sausage

1 medium onion

head of garlic (yeah...the whole thing!)

1 green pepper

3-4 stalks of celery

4 cups of parboiled rice

Tony's seasoning, to taste

a splash of Kitchen Bouquet

and roughly...2 tablespoons of crisco

This served roughly 8 adults with generous portions. (And possibly left overs.)

I would like to say that "I" started off by chopping but I pretty much just took notes and pictures this time. Bo, Ty's dad, did all of the hard work. You'll see those are his hands chopping and stirring throughout. He's a really good teacher.

Start off by chopping all of your veggies & meats.

Garlic.

Onion. This onion saw a uinique chopping method. It looked good at first. A pretty decent rough chop to get it started and then Bo went all crazy with the slap chop. He claimed the blade was dull from over use but I really think he just enjoyed slapping it. Caught me off gaurd the first time. I'm glad I was just taking notes. I jumped about 3 feet in the air the first time he did it.

The celery also got a mean slap chop experience.

Voila! Trinity.

At this point there was a whirlwind of chopping involved. All of the parsley and all of the green pepper were chopped and then added to this bowl. Bo moved really fast, a real chopping pro, so I was unable to snap photos inbetween.

Cube your chicken. Set aside in a seperate bowl. Season with Tony's seasoning.

Slice up your sausages. Add to a seperate bowl, season with Tony's. And now this is where it gets really specific.

This is VERY important! Now I'd like to make it known that you can make a jambalaya in something other than a cast iron pot but it just doesn't taste the same.

It could be the crisco. You should use it to coat the bottom of the pot (and even the meat if you're feeling frisky.)

Brown the chicken and remove it from the pot.

Brown the sausage and remove it from pot.

Add your veggies garlic, onion, peppers, celery, parsley & cook until your onion has a clear color.

Add back in your veggies. Stir.

Now it's time to add your rice. That's parboiled rice. Not so popular where I'm from, I'm told it's a "Lousiana thing." It works out great because it isn't sticky. Just do your best. We used 4 cups of rice which means 8 cups of water, we added 1 can of Campbell's beef consumme & then added it to the pot. Bo suggests that if you have a couple of chicken boullion cubes he'd toss them in the pot at this time. We didn't have any in the house so I can't vouch for the deliciousness of this claim. Add all of this to the pot, bring to a boil and cover.

This is our covered cast iron pot. (You'll notice the HUGE pot on the ground. That's the one they usually use but since I requested a meal for just a few people instead of an army we're using the baby pot.)

Boil for 20-25 minutes until your rice has soaked up all the liquid and it's nice and soft.

Okay so let's pretend I rotated this picture so you could see Bo adding just the right amount of Kitchen Bouquet. Yes this is a real product. It's a browning and flavor additive. I've never heard of it, I'm not sure how crucial it is to the process but the end result was pretty darn tasty so I say go for it. I'm also not sure how widely available this product is so for my fav down in Florida, you'll have to let me know if you see it at Publix! He gave this a quick stir and then it was time to serve.

DONE! Time for dinner!

All kinds of meat can be used instead of just sausage and chicken. You can use shrimp and pork too. It's up to you. I think shrimp would have been really yummy. Next time maybe.

Again, don't judge my lack of photo rotation. I'm a novice. We weren't in a dish doing mood either so just paper plates and some garlic bread. MMM. I was told that white navy beans, potato salad and a good lettuce salad are great to serve next to it and that lemon pie makes a great dessert. But honestly, It was great just by itsself!

Social Night

This is La Thai Uptown, a wonderful place to spend your Tuesday night. It happens to be Social Night. What does that mean for you? $5 appetizers, $5 Stoli cocktails and $2 Abita beers.

Shall I break it down into even further deliciousness for you?

You have the option of the following appetizers; vegetable springs rolls, summer rolls, shu-mai, skewerless chicken sate, crispy coconut shrimp, crispy calamari, mama's stuffed chicken wings and mussles.

An overview of the table that night. I realize this may look like a lot but it's not. And...it was so delicious that we reordered some of our dishes! So..maybe it is a lot. But I'm a Super Tourist. Trying everything is part of the plan, so you see...we had to.

This was the first item to arrive at the table. The shu-mai. A steamed chicken and shrimp dumpling with a sweet garlic soy sauce. Delicious. Sad that there's only 4 of them. They were gone before the other 5 plates hit the table!

Skewerless Chicken Sate was the 2nd item to arrive. I discovered that I don't like peanut sauce and the rest of the table only found it mediocre. Next time we'll probably leave this one off and venture to other options available on the menu. But with a $5 price tag, you've got to try everything once right?  

A tasty plate of crispy calamari with a sweet chili sauce came next. For those of you who are in favor of the traditional marinara I highly reccomend you head straight for a serving of sweet chili sauce next time. My mouth is watering just thinking about it! It's sweet, it's spicy, it's everything you didn't know you wanted in a fried calamari dish! (And for $5 it's a huge plate!) And so good, we ordered a 2nd plate of this one!

Mussels. The best thing to hit my taste buds all night!!! Steamed mussels served in a curry broth with a side of pomme frites. This dish is soo good it deserves a gold star. Make that 2 gold stars. It was so good we had to order a 2nd bowl of this one too! I had to contain myself to keep from slurping up the curry after the mussels were all gone. Thank goodness for fries which dipped every so nice into the curry. This was the best dish of the night, hands down!

A small intro...Hillary & Nate. Our newest best buds here in New Orleans take us often to eat. And my favorite part is that Nate is a trained pastry chef. Which means...

DESSERT!!!

On the left is the Sweet Sticky Coconut Rice served with fresh mango & berry slices. You'll notice the forkfull that's missing I couldn't break the camera back out in time to catch this dish before Nate had at it! Then I got distracted by the chocolate cake and had to have several forkfulls before I could bring myself to stop eating and take a picture. Wow. Double Wow. Two fantastic dishes. Thanks Nate!

La Thai is located at 4938 Prytania Street in Uptown New Orleans. You can call them @ 504.899.8866.

This brother sister duo has been in the restaurant biz for quite some time learning all of the ropes from "Mama" who leaves her namesake on the menu here and there. They have won many awards the latest being 2nd place in the King of Lousiana Seafood competition where Diana was the first ever female chef to compete!

All this talk about food makes me hungry. It's dinner time. Good night everyone!

Are you ready for some football?

Are you ready for some football!?!?!?

Because New Orleans sure is! This is what Decatur Street looked like at about 5pm today just before the start of the NFL Kickoff Parade. Only in New Orleans would they celebrate kick off with a parade. And if you'll notice the big giante mega screen there, they were broadcasting the Taylor Swift/Dave Matthews Band concert that was taking place in Jackson Square just before kick off.

Leading the parade is the Rebirth Jazz Band. They're kind of a big deal around these parts. They've got a standing gig at one of the local hot spots, we'll be visiting there sometime in the near future.

Following up is the Marine Marching Band.

And the St. Augustine High School Marching band. Also a big deal around here!

Okay this float was really neat! You can't barely see the yellow ring in the center of the circle but the lights lit up the whole thing. Then the lights all down the cars of the train lit up too! Okay so I was excited! I love a good parade! (Good thing, I'm in the right city for it!)

Pepsi, a sponsor, had their own float.

Visa, another sponsor, another float.

Then here comes the NFL float. Hey! Look there! A chef on the NFL float!

Wait a minute! That's not just any chef, that's Chef Paul Prudhomme, author of many fantastic cook books, owner of one of my favorite restaraunts, K. Pauls Lousiana Kitchen located on Chartres St. where I spent the most romantic wonderful Valentines dinner ever. Lookin' good Chef!

And a fly over!

So it's 10:03 here and the Saints are up 14-9. I leave you with a chant...

WHO DAT! WHO DAT! WHO DAT SAY DEY GONNA BEAT DEM SAINTS! WHO DAT!

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Update!

Final Score 14-9 SAINTS!

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That's street car to you!

Recognize that car up there? Yes, that's right, that's the oldest continuously operating street car in the WORLD! And I rode it! For $1.25 you can hop on the street car and take it one of three directions. Straight up Canal and back, all around St. Charles or down by the riverside. You can also purchase a 1 day Jazzy Pass for 5 dollars. They are available on the streetcar or you can purchase them in advance at the New Orleans Convention Center or the Visitor's Bureau. Should you make an extended trip of it a 5 day and a 31 day pass are also available.

This particular adventure takes place on St. Charles.

This is the street car. These are the people. Open the door and...ok, not working. Just a reminder...This is the New Orleans Street Car. This is not a trolley. So that's STREET CAR not trolley. And now we've got that all cleared up...

This is the St. Charles section of the street car. Had I been taking photos like a good blogger instead of oogling over the beautiful houses I might have photos to post but I got lost in the view and forgot! I'm terrible I know. When you're on the street car headed down St. Charles you take a ride through the Garden District. It is here that the wealthy came to live when the town was still being settled. On each block there would only be 4 large homes instead of lots of smaller ones. It earned its name Garden District due to the fact that with all that extra land they had room for pretty gardens. These days the houses stayed but they are a mix of single family homes and some have been turned into smaller apartments, much like the apartment I'm in now. Also located on St. Charles are both Tulane and Loyola University.

Fun facts (or rumors, whatever) In 1929 there was a transit strike due to shabby pay. The townspeople being good supportive citizens dropped off sandwiches on baguettes and delivered them to the "poor boys" of the transit strike. It is here that the name "po'boy" was given to the very popular New Orleans sandwich.

This post can't be done without mentioning the very famous play "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams. The streetcar line, Desire, was part of the French Quarter line than ran down Bourbon and into the Marigny. Obviously this is not one of the three lines still running so if you wanted to check it out your best bet is to get a copy of the 1951 film staring Marlon Brando.

Though I do love a good spot of public transportation but next time I think we should eat something! What should it be?