Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler!

Admittedly, Mardi Gras 2010 has come and gone. Tits were flashed, beads were tossed (along with many stomachs' contents, I'm sure), king cakes were eaten.

Did we here at Chez Boeckman-Walker do any of these things? Well, as Meatloaf sang, "Two out of three ain't bad."

(We ate king cake, and the boy was tossed some beads at school. Get your mind out of the gutter, Gentle Reader!)

Since Tuesdays are incredibly crazy days for us, we enjoyed a Creole dish in honor of Mardi Gras the Saturday before. Instead of revisiting last year's Creole chicken dish, I instead hunted down a jambalayah recipe I thought we might enjoy. None of us had ever eaten it, and the boy was curious about it after watching the second-season DS9 episode "The Jem'Hadar." Which has nothing to do with Mardi Gras, but there is a scene in which jambalayah is consumed amongst the foilage of the "alien" world of the Stage 7 at Paramount.

Yeah, we're a bunch of nerds. Wanna make something of it, Gentle Reader?

Turkey Jambalaya1 T olive oil
1 1/2 C chopped onion
1 t bottled minced garlic
1 C chopped green bell pepper
1 C chopped red bell pepper
2 1/2 t paprika
1/2 t salt
1/2 t dried oregano
1/2 t ground red pepper
1/2 t black pepper
1 C uncooked long-grain rice
2 C fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth
14.5 ounces canned diced tomatoes, undrained
2 C shredded cooked turkey
6 ounces andouille sausage, chopped
2 T sliced green onions

1. Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat.
   
2. Add the onion and garlic and sauté 6 min. or until lightly browned.
   
3. Stir in the bell peppers, paprika, salt, oregano, red pepper and black pepper, and sauté 1 min.
   
4. Add the rice and sauté 1 min.
   
5. Stir in the broth and tomatoes, and then bring the mixture to a boil.
   
6. Cover, reduce heat and simmer 15 min.
   
7. Add the turkey and sausage, cover and cook 5 min.
   
8. Sprinkle with green onions.

Yield: 8 one-cup servings

Nutritional Info
Calories: 249
Fat: 7.6 g
Sat fat: 2.4 g
Protein: 17.3 g
Carbs: 27.4 g
Fiber: 2.7 g
Cholesterol: 42 mg
Sodium: 523 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Once I had the inspiration to make jambalaya, I had to find a recipe--and not just any 'ol recipe. I wanted to find something that was fairly authentic, so I got myself a brief education on the differences between Creole and Cajun foods, on the possible origins of jambalaya and on what can and should and shouldn't go into it, be it Creole-style or Cajun-style.

And then I wound up choosing a recipe from Cooking Light. Mind you, Gentle Reader, it didn't strike me as some bastardized abomination masquerading as jambalaya, for its ingredients by and large jived with the ingredients of other recipes I encountered, save the turkey. I suppose I went with it because I have a reasonable level of trust in recipes from Cooking Light. I can't say the same with recipes from, say, AllRecipes.com.

Given what I'd learned about jambalaya and my desire to create a fairly true-to-form dish and coupling them with my desire to make the dish...somewhat healthful, I futzed a wee bit:

• I substituted shredded chicken breast meat for the turkey. I read that Creole jambalaya has chicken, whereas the Cajun version has crawfish, shrimp and such. Plus I just didn't have any turkey on hand. (It's all in other dishes frozen and waiting for emergency thawing in the deep freezer.)
  
• I had to cook the breast in order to shred it, and I reserved the water in which I boiled the sucker to use as part of the broth. Thrifty, non?
  
• Because I used a whole chicken breast that probably weighed at least half a pound, I probably had more than 2 cups of shredded meat. Having too much chicken is never a problem in our household.
  
• I think I used more than 6 ounces of andouille sausage. When I bought it at Sprouts, I initially asked the deli worker for one link. Its weight, at the time, didn't calculate in my head to be 6 ounces, so I asked for two and went on my merry way. Later, as I realized my possible mistake with the weight, I came to suspect one link would have done the job. But, of course, I had two--and what the hell am I going to do with a second link of andouille sausage when I'm not even sure I'm using the first one right and try my damnedest to keep organ meats out of my kitchen?!? Obviously, Gentle Reader, I chopped 'em both up and threw 'em in the pot.
  
• To get the cup and a half of chopped onion, I used a full yellow onion then chopped up half of a red onion I had in the refrigerator that needed to be used. I was concerned the two onions might affect the flavor, and I'm not sure it did. They did, though, make the dish even more colorful.

Colorful, non?

I wish I'd taken a bit more time to learn about the sausage because as I was chopping it up, I stopped and pondered, Am I supposed to remove the casing, or is it supposed to stay on? I mean, with some sausages and extruded meat products with casings, you leave the casings on. Others, you should remove them--like with bologna. Or at least such was my dread at the time. Hell, how was I to know? The sausage I grew up with came in a plastic tube, and you obviously had to remove that casing.

To resole my dilemma, I took one of the chopped pieces, slit the casing and attempted to remove it. The meat inside promptly started to disintegrate. Well, the casing stays on, if only to keep the sausage together! I decided.

Naturally, when it came time for us to eat the jambalaya, the husband almost immediately noted the presence of the casing and its unchewable qualities. I myself didn't have any problems with it--but I'm not sure that's a good thing. And, of course, since Daddy was having problems with something in the dish, the boy had to have the exact same problem. So, out came a small Corelle bowl for the boys to share in which to deposit their sausage casings. Whatever. Crisis solved.

If you've never had andouille sausage before, Gentle Reader, trust me when I say it's got a nice bite to it. I think it imparts a good part of the dish's heat to it, along with the red pepper. If you wanted your jambalaya even hotter, you could probably substitute the full amount of the red pepper with cayenne or another hot chile's ground flesh. You could probably toss in some chopped hot peppers as well, but you'd then have to ask yourself, Am I staying somewhat true to the dish, or am I just trying to prove how macho I am?

No, Gentle Reader, I'm not judging you. I'm just making an observation.

We three human residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker found the dish as I'd prepared it, with only the meat substitution and perhaps a bit more sausage than necessary, to really hit the spot. The husband even ran out to HEB to procure a warm loaf of crusty "French" to accompany our steaming bowls of Creole goodness. Sure, it wasn't Mardi Gras and we were nowhere near New Orleans and our jambalaya was probably a pale imitation of the real thing, but we were happy, had our bellies filled with warm goodness and not a one of us had to lift our shirts for a string of cheap beads.
Okay, the boy got beads, but they came with the king cake I'd bought at HEB. He also got the Christ child figure, so he's on the hook for the king cake next year. Sucker. Laissez les bons temps rouler, indeed.