Jambalaya Time

 

That time of year has come around again already- Lent.  Of course, before the deprivations of Ash Wednesday comes the celebrations of Fat Tuesday, or as it's known down in New Orleans, Mardi Gras.  Some celebrate the day with lots of drinking, some with eating a big hunk of king cake, some with the appropriate music, and some with general partying.  For me, it's always about the food, traditional cajun food, and maybe some zydeco, as I played a bit of that on my various radio shows around the country.  There used to be a good cajun restaurant in town here, and while it was almost impossible to get in on Mardi Gras, I could usually talk the owner into giving me and my brother a couple of po' boys to go, which was good enough.  Unfortunately, that place closed down years ago, taking that fine food and atmosphere to far away. 

Of course my solution was to figure out how to cook some of this for myself.  The one I decided to take on was jambalaya.  I liked the one done there, and it seemed simple enough.  I also liked other foods there, but those seemed a bit more complicated.  I did some research, and found that there were so many different recipes out there for jambalaya, that there was no real recipe.  It was a rice dish, and had to include some form of pork (the French word for ham is 'jambe') but otherwise, it was whatever the cook wanted it to be.  Like Italian that way, and I could figure that out, so jambalaya would be easy.  Supermarkets around here don't seem to have crawfish, but shrimp are a suitable substitute, and many versions don't have any seafood, so that is not required.  And everything else is in the supermarkets around here, so I came up with a reasonable recipe.  Never wrote it down, so each year I just make it as I remember, and it seems to work out.  

So I bought my ingredients a few days ago, cooked it up (and enjoyed a first bowl) on Sunday, had another bowl on Monday, and today I finished it off, in honor of Fat Tuesday.  Also had some cold beer (picked up a six pack the other day as we had none in the house), and while my collection of zydeco and cajun albums is in storage, I have a computer and YouTube, which means I have access to anything I can remember, and I do have a good memory for music.  At Studio Arrabbiata, we always celebrate spicy food, so this is a tradition I have to be part of.

Still no camera, so I don't have a photo of this batch, so I pulled up an old photo of a previous batch, that like the one I just made, is without shrimp.  Today's did have andouille sausage, chicken, green peppers, onions, celery, tomatoes, rice, plenty of spices, and a few other things I'm not mentioning here. As the saying goes, "laissez les bon temps roulez".