Jambalaya

Last summer, I went on the most amazing trip across America with my favourite holiday company, G Adventures (check out their sitehere).  In 18 days, I travelled from San Francisco all the way across to New Orleans but it didn’t occur to me to add any extra days onto the end of the trip so that I could eat my way through New Orleans and it’s southern-style cooking wonders. 

The Louisiana swamp

The wildlife- besides hundreds of crocs!

Me and a baby gator, bred in captivity after he lost his mum!

On my last night before my flight home, I did try some traditional fried chicken with sweet potato waffles and it was delish!  Sadly though, that was my one and only meal in New Orleans as the next day, it was airline food all the way. 

I love jam-jar drinking glasses.  I've got some arriving any day now!

 I was kind of disappointed that I didn’t get to try the famous Louisiana dish, Jambalaya, so when I found a recipe for it in a cook book, I decided to give it a try.  I have adapted this recipe so that the veg gets a little more cooking time and used brown rice instead of white because we know how much better it is for you!

Ingredients:

½ a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, regular pepper and salt

2 tsp of thyme

350g diced chicken breast

1 onion (chopped)

2 garlic cloves, crushed

2 yellow peppers, diced (yellow peppers are really good to help your hair grow apparently!)

2 sticks of celery, diced

115g pancetta

175g chorizo sausage, sliced

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

2 tbsp tomato puree

225ml chicken stock

450g raw prawns

450g cooked brown rice

Method:

1         Mix together your cayenne pepper, regular pepper and salt in a bowl. Add the diced chicken and toss to coat.  Set aside until later.

2         Place the onion, garlic, peppers, celery, pancetta, chorizo, tinned tomatoes, tomato puree and the chicken stock into your slow cooker.  Cook this batch of ingredients on low for 2 hours.

3         After two hours, add the chicken to the slow cooker. Stir into the mix, cover with the lid and continue to cook for 6 hours on low.

4         For the last 30 minutes of cooking, add your cooked rice and raw prawns. Stir through the mix and cover again until the cooking time is up.  A handy hint I’ve been told about slow cookers lately is that if you remove the lid half an hour before serving, this allows the dish to thicken up.  I’d keep this dish covered though to allow the prawns their half an hour to cook, then you could switch your cooker to ‘warm’ and take the lid off then.

5         Serve and enjoy though sadly, Jambalaya would probably taste much better if you were eating it next to the Mississippi!

This dish was really tasty but because I haven’t tried the real thing in New Orleans, I can’t possibly compare it!  Looks like this might be the perfect excuse to visit New Orleans again though!

Jambalaya...by Helen!

Happy eating!