The other day I was on a tear at Central Market, buying things to make things at some future point without knowing just what the “future point” was. I even got so excited that I bought a couple of pounds of andouille, a Cajun sausage, along with bell peppers and herbs and onions and greens and things you throw into pots.
Normally I’m not a huge fan of Central Market’s sausages. Their butchers are busy being health-conscious, and because of that they never put enough fat into the mix to lubricate the meat properly and carry the flavor, and their sausages tend to dry out in the pan and lose flavor. Once I calmed down again from my grocery-store high I remembered this, and had to start thinking about what I was going to do in order not to end up with a bunch of sawdust in sausage casings. Fortunately, MasterCook came to the rescue. I told it I wanted recipes containing andouille, and it coughed up a dozen or so that I had collected.
In my cooking-echo days, one of our active members was a guy from Calgary named Fred Towner, retired from the oil industry, who had picked up a taste for Louisiana cooking in his working days. Fred could be relied on as a regular source of south-of-Baton-Rouge recipes, and one of his Cajun stews was what I ended up doing. You can always throw sausage into a stew if you’re worried about dryness, and since andouille is a Cajun-country thing, it was only appropriate.
Sausage and Chicken Jambalaya
Serving Size : 12 Preparation Time : 2:00
Yield : 4 quarts
Cuisine : Cajun
Categories : Chicken, Pork, Stews
Amount Measure Ingredient — Preparation Method -------- ------------ -------------------------------- ¼ cup Oil 2 pounds Chicken, skinned and boned 1½ pounds Andouille sausage, cut in ¼” rounds 4 cups Chopped onions 2 cups Chopped celery 2 cups Chopped green bell pepper 1 tablespoon Minced garlic 5 cups Reduced-sodium chicken broth 2½ teaspoons Salt Cayenne pepper, to taste 4 cups Long-grain rice 1 bunch Chopped cilantro, for garnish 2 cups Chopped scallions, for garnish
Season and brown the chicken in oil (lard or bacon drippings are traditional) over medium-high heat. Add the sausage slices to the pot and sauté with the chicken. Remove both from the pot once browned.
For brown jambalaya, make a deep chestnut colored roux, or use Kitchen Bouquet. (Sam says: make the damn roux. It’s not hard, you just have to be really patient with it.) For red jambalaya, delete this. Sauté the onions, celery, green pepper and garlic to the tenderness that you desire.
Return the chicken and sausage to the pot. Add liquid and salt, pepper, and other desired seasonings and bring to a boil. If using Kitchen Bouquet for brown jambalaya, add one or two tablespoons. For red jambalaya, add about a quarter cup of paprika, and you may want to use half stock and half tomato juice or V-8 for your liquid rather than chicken broth.
Add rice and return to the boil. Cover and reduce the heat to simmer. Cook for a total of 30 minutes. After ten minutes of cooking, remove the cover and quickly turn rice from top to bottom completely. Serve garnished with chopped cilantro and scallions.
Source : New Orleans School of Cooking, New Orleans, LA
Original poster : Fred Towner
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Per Serving : 551 Calories; 23g Fat (37.8% calories from fat); 25g Protein; 59g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 50mg Cholesterol; 1041mg Sodium. Exchanges: 3 Grain(Starch); 1½ Lean Meat; 1½ Vegetable; 2 Fat.
NOTES : 1 cup raw long grain rice will feed 3 people. 4 keys: 1 cup rice to a total of 2 cups of trinity in any combination (trinity = onions, celery and green pepper) 1 cup raw rice to 1¼ cups liquid. Over-season to compensate for the rice. Cook for a total of 30 minutes, turning completely after 10 minutes.
Yeah. This one is worth keeping. L’s opinion was “you’re welcome to make this again any time,” and again, I managed to convince M to try it and find out that food can come in a bowl with liquids and still be OK.
The next challenge is gonna be using up cabbage. I bought a cabbage, then another came in our CSA box last week. One of them can go into a stewpot with the kale and carrots that also came in the CSA box, but that other one is de trop.
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