# Let's talk Jambalaya...



## Rocklobster (Apr 9, 2012)

I love a good jambalaya. I know it's not traditional, but I love to use leftover ham as an ingredient in my jambalaya.  Other than that, I keep my recipe fairly authentic.  It's also one of those recipes that you can play around with and come up with something very satisfying every time with what you have on hand. 
Like tonight, I am going to make it with, leftover ham and chicken breast. I used up all of the shrimp a few nights ago so there won't be any of that in the mix. I have some home made chorizo in freezer so I may use up one or two of those.  Comfort food......yummm


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## Andy M. (Apr 9, 2012)

We really like jambalaya.  I haven't made one recently.  I like to use chicken thigh meat as it stays moist.  Shrimp and andouille are also great in jambalaya.

I usually make a creole sauce to go with it.


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## Margi Cintrano (Apr 9, 2012)

Good Afternoon,

Since there are some of us, who do not know how to prepare Creole or New Orleans style cuisine, are there any natives who can give us a recipe ?

Sounds very interesting ... I have had some Creole many many years ago and some New Orleans Gumbo ... 

It could be alot of fun, for a group of USA friends I work with ...

Thanks alot.
Margi.


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## Rocklobster (Apr 9, 2012)

Andy M. said:


> We really like jambalaya.  I haven't made one recently.  I like to use chicken thigh meat as it stays moist.  Shrimp and andouille are also great in jambalaya.
> 
> I usually make a creole sauce to go with it.



Normally I put shrimp in, but I don't have any today and I'm not going to drive into town to get some. The Andouille I would love but its not that common around here( I have to drive downtown Ottawa) so I am going to use chorizo instead.


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## Andy M. (Apr 9, 2012)

Rocklobster said:


> Normally I put shrimp in, but I don't have any today and I'm not going to drive into town to get some. The Andouille I would love but its not that common around here( I have to drive downtown Ottawa) so I am going to use chorizo instead.




Chorizo will work fine.


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## Steve Kroll (Apr 9, 2012)

Margi Cintrano said:


> Since there are some of us, who do not know how to prepare Creole or New Orleans style cuisine, are there any natives who can give us a recipe?


Margi,

I'm not a native New Orleanian, but I've cooked quite a few of the native dishes. I find this website to be a fantastic source for Cajun and Creole recipes:

Creole/Cajun: The Basics

The man who maintains the website is a native and has done his research. Every one of his recipes I've made has turned out fantastic. He's an advocate of fresh ingredients and homemade stock.


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## Margi Cintrano (Apr 9, 2012)

@ Steve,

Thanks very much for the Creole and Cajun cuisines website. 
Kindest. 
Margi.


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## Margi Cintrano (Apr 9, 2012)

@ Steve,

The shrimp creole looks lovely ... I just took a quick scan ...

Have to spend some time understanding the ingredients of Cajun and Creole and the various stocks, etc. 

Kindest.
Margi.


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## giggler (Apr 9, 2012)

I am not a fan of Jambulia.. too much rice for me.. I prefer creole sauce or Gumbo..

in Spanish, is much like Paella..

 also to Steve, your page came up blank to Me.. I like this page for Louisian stuff..

The Gumbo Pages :: Make Levees, Not War

Eric, Austin Tx.


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## CraigC (Apr 9, 2012)

I've made many variations of jambalaya and have found the one I like best is from Paul Prudhomme. Here is a link. Chicken and Tasso Jambalaya Recipe at Epicurious.com

Tasso is a very spicy cured and smoked ham, for which I believe there isn't a substitute. We make our own using one of Emeril's recipes. I can't find the creole sauce recipe that we use on line, but it is really spicy. We had to tone it down due to our Tasso being much spicier than most commercial brands.


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## Andy M. (Apr 9, 2012)

CraigC said:


> I've made many variations of jambalaya and have found the one I like best is from Paul Prudhomme. Here is a link. Chicken and Tasso Jambalaya Recipe at Epicurious.com
> 
> Tasso is a very spicy cured and smoked ham, for which I believe there isn't a substitute. We make our own using one of Emeril's recipes. I can't find the creole sauce recipe that we use on line, but it is really spicy. We had to tone it down due to our Tasso being much spicier than most commercial brands.



This is a good recipe.  I use the recipe from PP's book, _Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen.  _The book goes back to the 80s and lists the individual spices as opposed to his newer versions wheich call for his proprietary spice blends.


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## GLC (Apr 9, 2012)

Margi Cintrano said:


> @ Steve,
> 
> The shrimp creole looks lovely ... I just took a quick scan ...
> 
> Have to spend some time understanding the ingredients of Cajun and Creole and the various stocks, etc.



"Zatarain's" is a brand of premixed Louisiana spice products. One of those is shrimp and crab boil. It can be red pepper, cloves, black pepper cloves, garlic thyme, bay marjoram, and lemon juice. Also maybe mustard seed, coriander seed, dill, allspice, etc. Whatever you like. Boil the shrimp with all that in water and dump the spices afterward. 

It's sort of interesting how there was (and in some ways still is) a distinction between Cajun and Creole. Classic Cajun is real subsistence cooking and commonly featured what you could kill and catch. Louisiana Creole cooking was more what you got when French cooking meets Spanish, African, and whatever else was around, but when classic ingredients were hard to find. The true Cajun was real basic and intended to stretch a limited quantity of protein into enough food to fill up a bunch of people. Kind of like paella. If you made your paella with opossum, you'd approximate Cajun. It's not that you have to use meat lightly in Cajun, but it's still valid Cajun when you do. Creole could be some high level cooking indeed. And some people claim high class Cajun cooking should be called Acadian. They say Cajun is what you eat when your mama cooks. 

Today, they're much closer to each other and really always were, in much the same relationships as "country" cooking to "restaurant" cooking everywhere. And Cajun came to be in the environment of the evolving Creole mix of cultures. The existence of Creole cooking should be credited to Madame Langlois. She was a French-Canadian who kept house for Governor Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville of Louisiana. (This was about 1701 to maybe 1720, some years before the British chased the Acadians out of Canada so they could become Cajuns.) She had been taught by the local natives how to cook the local plants and animals, like sasafras and crawfish and she adapted predominately French cooking to the use of those ingredients. (They would have all learned how to cook with okra from slaves, since okra was just arriving in North America about then.) There were few enough people in French Louisiana at that time that one clever cook could have a lot of influence. Nearly everyone there was from somewhere else, so they needed someone to help adapt their cooking. In today's geography, it wouldn't even be Louisiana Creole.  Where she was cooking is today Le Moyne, Alabama. 

Madame Langlois and her fellow cooks would have invented gumbo, since Creole gumbo isn't Creole gumbo without okra. And gumbo was as often as not served over corn grits, another Indian thing that served when rice was expensive. Rice was just arriving in Louisiana. Cajuns generally made their gumbo with sasafras as the thickener instead of okra and used dark roux, "black" roux. Gumbo tends to be cooked all day, largely as a memory of the time when livestock wasn't killed for meat until it was too old to produce anything else and was therefore tough. (Not the okra, though. It's cooked first until it's the right thickness, and added back in later. It gets stringy if it's overcooked.) You can still travel fairly short distances through southwest Louisiana and detect distinct local variations in gumbo. 

You get a pretty good idea of the proper consistency of gumbo when you know that "gumbo" was also used to describe the liquid mud that the streets there were churned to in those times. "I had to walk, and I got gumbo up to my knees."


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## PrincessFiona60 (Apr 9, 2012)

I use Emeril's Essence with 1/4th the salt, make it myself.

I love all Cajun and Creole cooking.  Jambalaya is a favorite and I see no problem with using ham, ya use wut ya got!


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## Dawgluver (Apr 9, 2012)

Some great resources here!  Yummm!

Reminds me, I need to make up another batch of Essence.


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## CraigC (Apr 10, 2012)

Andy M. said:


> This is a good recipe. I use the recipe from PP's book, _Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana Kitchen. _The book goes back to the 80s and lists the individual spices as opposed to his newer versions wheich call for his proprietary spice blends.


 
Exactly why I skip recipes that call for preblended, commercial spice blends, except Tony's creole blend. The blends maybe fine if you use them regularly, but I'm sure they are way over priced.


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## Rocklobster (Apr 10, 2012)

Steve Kroll said:


> I'm not a native New Orleanian, but I've cooked quite a few of the native dishes. I find this website to be a fantastic source for Cajun and Creole recipes:
> 
> Creole/Cajun: The Basics
> 
> The man who maintains the website is a native and has done his research. Every one of his recipes I've made has turned out fantastic. He's an advocate of fresh ingredients and homemade stock.



I went with the spice blend in the jambalaya recipe. The one with, cayenne, black pepper, white pepper, oregano, thyme, 2 bay leaves. It was great. That, with the big chunks of smoked ham and chicken stock made it the best I have ever produced.......This is one recipe that I am going to write down...


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## Zhizara (Apr 12, 2012)

Besides the cost savings, making your own blend you can leave out the salt so you can control the saltiness.  Sometimes you want more of the spice flavor, but a mix has too much salt.


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## PrincessFiona60 (Apr 12, 2012)

Zhizara said:


> Besides the cost savings, making your own blend you can leave out the salt so you can control the saltiness.  Sometimes you want more of the spice flavor, but a mix has too much salt.



That is exactly why I use Emeril's Essence recipe, I follow it faithfully until I get to the salt.  Best stuff I have for flavoring many things.


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