By Perry Washburn
At last night's cooking class, I told the guests about the "jambalaya bag" we keep in the freezer. In it goes that extra sausage patty, the leftover half of a chicken breast, the last pork chop no one ate. When it's full - a packed quart sized bag would be close to pound of meat - I make Jambalaya. In the recipe below, just substitute the contents of the bag for the crawfish. Or add it in, too. Trade shrimp for the crawfish. Here are the rules for Jambalaya: don't tinker with the ratios of vegetables, stock and rice. Because the veggies carry a lot of water content, they play a big role in getting the rice to the correct consistency. And, to me, Jambalaya MUST have sausage. Take out the sausage, and the andouille gods will haunt your dreams forever!
I will make a red jambalaya in my March 23 class. It does NOT use a roux. But this version WITH the roux is Carolyn's favorite.
Brown Jambalaya with Crawfish
1 pound crawfish tails
1 pound andouille or other smoked sausage
½ cup oil
½ cup flour
2 cups onions
1 cup celery
1 cup bell pepper
1 Tbsp garlic
1-2 Tbs fresh hot pepper (Cayenne, Serrano, jalepeno) chopped
2 cups rice (Uncle Ben’s converted)
2 ½ cups stock
1 tsp salt
½ cup green onions
Brown the sausage in small amount of oil in a large pot over medium high heat. Remove from pot. Don’t leave any little bits behind, or they will burn in the next step.
Make sure your vegetables are chopped, and right next to the pot.
Make roux: Add in oil to make ½ cup. Heat until hot but not smoking and add in ½ cup flour. Stir constantly over medium heat, 15-20 minutes or until the color is dark sandstone (a little darker than peanut butter). Do not walk away from the stove during this step. You can lose a roux in a heartbeat, ruining your meal, your day, your mood.
As soon as you reach the proper color, dump in the “trinity”: onions, peppers and celery, and stir. Don’t dally here, as the roux will keep browning until you stop it with the trinity. Add cayenne pepper and garlic and sauté until trinity is wilted.
Add crawfish, sausage, rice, salt and stock and bring to a boil, stirring well.
Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir: Turn over contents completely. (I know, you’ve probably been told to not stir rice, but it’s OK. Live dangerously!) Recover and cook for 20 minutes more. Turn off heat, add in green onions. Let stand for 10 minutes.
Great shared with friends over a beer!
1 comment:
Jambalaya often is a 'clean out the fridge' dish at our house, too. When the trinity needs used from the crisper drawer (do you know they sell chopped, bagged trinity at Trader Joe's?), and we have enough leftover meat, it is jambalaya night.
One our favorite jambalaya stories which now crosses the ocean: When Milica lived with us in high school, she had to cook dinner once a week. I thought every good Serbian girl needed to learn Cajun. She made jambalaya from a recipe I had only I didn't realized that I'd been cutting back on the 1 T of cayenne it called for. You guessed it: dinner was inedible--WAY too hot--and we all laughed until we cried. I took her Zatarain's jambalaya mix when we visited her in Serbia recently.
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