Tony's Food 101: Girlfriend's House Jambalaya

Okay, so after sort of a long hiatus, Overeducated and Well Fed is back in business, and we're starting back off with a super-easy dish that's both healthy and cooks up in a single pot, making cleanup fast too (hence why I made it at my girlfriend's house).

Thinking about jambalaya conjures images of New Orleans, Mardi Gras and lots of capsaicin - the stuff that makes chilis so hot. While those things are all true, jambalaya shouldn't be relegated to the category of mystery and exotica by non-Southerners. Once you break down the components, it's actually a really accessible technique for making flavorful one-pot meals. You basically have meat, vegetables and rice. They are all cooked in a particular order and way, making jambalaya more of a technique than any single dish. Today's jambalaya looks more complicated that it actually needs to be, and that's by choice.

So that I could a) impress my girlfriend (and maybe her roommates too) and b) so that I could illustrate exactly variety jambalaya is capable of, today's version has chicken, andouille sausage and shrimp. Feel free to use one of these, any two of these, or all three of these, depending on what you have on hand. Likewise, don't confine yourself to the vegetables I used either. You don't even have to use the tomato if you don't want to! Apparently, in New Orleans, Creole (or Red) Jambalaya contains tomato while Cajun (or Brown) doesn't. Any deep southerners among the readership may feel free to validate or dispute this, by the way. I even messed with the seasonings, not having any pre-made Creole or Cajun seasonings on hand over at the girl's place. I'll include instructions for both in the recipe below, because what I used came out pretty tasty!

One definite Do Not is using a pre-made jambalaya mix. Pretty much all seasoned rice or pasta box mixes are loaded with salt, which is associated with high blood pressure and therefore vascular disease (e.g. heart attacks and stroke). Making this stuff yourself is easy, and you can control the amount of salt, fat (and all the other tasty bad-for-you) things that go into it. Make stuff from scratch and live to cook another day.

Girlfriend's House Jambalaya

• One large onion, diced.
• Two cloves of garlic, finely chopped.
• One or two large carrots, diced.
• One each red and green bell peppers, again, diced. By the way, when I say "diced" I mean cut into about 1/4 square in flat pieces. Here are more detailed instruction for those who want them.
• Two boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bit-sized cubes.
• 1/2 lb andouille sausage, cut on a bias to make oblong or ellipse-shaped slices. I like Trader Joe's andouille chicken sausage, and the smokiness of it helped me get around not having any cajun/creole seasoning to use.
• One pound of frozen, cooked, tail-off shrimp. Any size is fine. Thaw them according to package directions prior to use. Actually, if you use the super huge ones, you may want to think about using two pounds so that they're a little more populous on your plate. You can also substitue crayfish (if you've been to Ikea lately) or langostine tails.
• One large can of diced tomatoes. The fire-roasted type are good in this dish, but avoid them if you're already using andouille sausage -and- cajun seasoning with a smoky flavor built in. Do not drain. Again, the tomatoes are all-together optional.
• One regular can of red kidney beans, drained and rinsed.
• A tablespoon or two of Cajun or Creole seasoning, to taste, and two big pinches of salt. Alternatively, you could do like I did an use the same amount of a salt-containing all-purpose seasoning mix that you like (I like Jane's Krazy Mixed Up seasonings), along with a dash of cayenne pepper and two of chili powder.
• One cup of low salt chicken stock/broth - use your own if you've made it!
• Two big handfuls (about one cup) of white or brown long-grain rice.

Add all of the veggies and a glug of olive oil to a shallow pot with a cover and sweat over medium heat - until the onions are just translucent.

Figure 8.a - I sweat vegetables.

Okay. Now turn the heat up to medium-high add in the chicken and sausage and let them brown for a while, stir it up occasionally. Add in your seasonings at this point. Once they are all brown and tastied-up, add in the kidney beans and tomatoes, then the stock, shrimp and rice. Bring the whole thing to a boil, then turn the heat down to low, cover and let it cook 20 minutes if using white rice, 40 if using brown.

The basic skeleton of the technique is 1) half-cook veggies, 2) add meat and half-cook, 3) add miscellaneous ingredients, stock, rice and simmer until rice is done.) See, you didn't believe me, but wasn't that easy?

Figure 8.b - The usual suspects.

Figure 8.c - The finished product.

Today's pictures are complements of my girlfriend, and her camera that's way better than mine.

Next week, we're going green... and no, I don't mean broccoli rabe.

Tony's Food 101: Mushroom Risotto

Risotto and I have a long history. Despite growing up in an Italian household, I never had risotto growing up (or polenta, for that matter, but that's a whole different story). Fast forward to my college years - my roommate and I in our first apartment away from our parents, cooking dinner every night and forcing our other two roommates to clean up after us, in the name of nutrition and cuisine. My mom, ironically, had sent me a recipe for risotto out of our local Little Italy's newspaper. My roommate and I decided to take it for a spin, however, it turns out that this particular ride was sort of a lemon. There was a single typo in the ingredients list: one cup of red wine. This aberrant cup of wine wasn't included anywhere in the instructions portion of the recipe. Was it put there accidently? Were we supposed to drink the wine while cooking the rice? Was it supposed to say "white wine"? Although not one of the great mysteries of the modern world, we were still confused by this inclusion. We put the red wine in the recipe anyway, unsure as really where it even fit in to the order of how to make this stuff. We ended up with a huge pan of tasty purple rice, that our other roommates absolutely refused to touch. We did our own dishes that night.

My next risotto memory happened maybe 5 or 6 years after the first. I'd had my entire senior year of college and four years of medical school to right the wrongs of the purple risotto and come up with my very own mixture of add-ins. I was on my very first date with my girlfriend, and some how (right, "some how") I started talking about food. She asked me what I usually made, I said I leaned towards Italian because of my heritage. She asked for examples, I offered risotto. She'd never had it before. Needless to say, over a year later we're still together. She'll tell you it was my home-made salsa that sinked it for her, I think it was a little dish of creamy, savory rice, cheese and mushrooms.



Mixed Mushroom Risotto

- One or two cloves of garlic, depending on your tastes, chopped fine.
- One large white or yellow onion, chopped fine.
(optional) One quarter to one half of a bulb and stalks of fennel (a.k.a. anise), weird frond-leaf things removed.
- A few glugs of olive oil.
- A generous pat of unsalted butter.
- A pinch of salt.
- As much fresh ground black pepper as you, your significant other, your children or your guests can stand.
- One cup of Arborio rice. I've used Carnaroli, however I was unilaterally unimpressed compared to mostly any Arborio I've used. Carnaroli is too long of a grain for this dish.
- Half of a little grocery store tub of sliced white button or baby bella mushrooms, washed THOROUGHLY and diced. Nobody likes dirt in their risotto.
- Either one grocery store tub of shiitake mushrooms, diced,
OR- one of those little packages of mixed fresh wild mushrooms (usually shiitake, enoki and portabello),
OR- assorted dried mushrooms that I usually buy at Ocean State Job Lot but you can sometimes find at asian markets and rarely at Trader Joes, reconstituted per package directions, diced and water they've soaked in reserved,
OR- assorted fresh actually wild mushrooms, like from your yard, but only if you're an accomplished forager or an old school Italian like my dad, also diced,
- 1 cup of white wine that you should plan on drinking with the meal.
- 6-8 cups of chicken (or veggie stock) warmed up. If you're a vegetarian (I'm not) and you don't like your local canned/cartoned vegetable stock (I don't), feel free to use the flavorful liquid left over from soaking the dried mushrooms - especially the shiitakes. You'll have to add a little salt to make up for what's missing in the stock.
- About 1/2-3/4 cup non-hard Italian cheese. I usually use Fontina, but lately I've been on a kick where I use Trader Joe's Italian Truffle Cheese. It has black truffle in it, which enhances the whole mushroom theme of the dish (and tastes awesome). Either shred this with a grater, or cut it up into small cubes.
- An equal amount of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Use the real thing, folks. Save the green can for... well... you should probably just throw the green can away. It's gross. The best stuff has the words "Parmagiano Reggiano" written in little pin holes in the rind.

Okay. Mix your aromatics (garlic, onions and maybe fennel) with the oil and butter and sweat over medium heat. When a recipe author tells you to sweat something, they mean put it over the heat until little beads of moisture form, but nothing has turned brown yet. Maybe a little golden, but not definitely not brown. Add in the rice. Yes, into the hot pan with oil and no liquid. This is how you make every risotto, not just mine. Allow the rice to cook until the sides of the rice are clear and the very middle is still white. Now add in all of the mushrooms, and then the wine. Stir frequently, allow the rice to absorb the wine. Once things are relatively dry again, add in a cup or two of stock. Allow it to absorb. You will repeat this step more times than you think possible. After about 4-5 cups, just add in one half a cup at a time. Do this until the rice cannot absorb any more liquid. Once you've reached this stage, the rice should have a creamy texture from all the starches it's let out during cooking. Feel free to taste it, the rice should have just a little bit of hardness to it. It should not be mush. If you've added too much liquid, not to worry. Just let the rice sit for a couple of minutes and the excess liquid will cook off and maybe absorb a little more than you thought it would. Last but not least, stir in your cheeses. The rice should already be creamy before any dairy is added, the cheese is more for flavor than texture. If you have any left after your meal (you may not, trust me), risotto makes mean left overs. I won't even get into the sweat-shop-style labor that goes into the best way to eat left over risotto: arancini. I'll save that for another posting.

I actually just made this for dinner last night, but I forgot to take pictures. Sorry folks!