Bounty Of The Bayou Jambalaya

Jambalaya is a Louisiana Creole rice dish with both Spanish and French influences. It has many similarities to it's Spanish cousin Paella. Both use rice and a variety of meats and vegetables. The chief difference between the two is that Jambalaya's ingredients are from the bayou and Paella's ingredient's are from the ocean, and Jambalaya has hotter spice's.

The Jambalaya that I'm making is also referred to as "Red Jambalaya" in that unlike the Cajun version, It uses tomatoes. The great thing about this dish is that you can use a lot of different kinds of meat or just two or more, depending on what you like or have on hand. The meat that you can choose from are Ham, Bacon Andouille Sausage, Shrimp, crawfish tail meat (crawdads),pork loin, and alligator tail. The two meats that I feel are citical to this dish is the Andouille Sausage and the Shrimp (the rest are optional!) The vegetables that you can choose are onions, green peppers, celery and tomatoes.

Ingredients

5 2/3 Cups of chicken broth

16 Oz tomato sauce

28 Oz diced tomatoes

4 Pieces of thick bacon

1 lb.Andouille sausage cut into 1/4 inch slices

3/4 lb. Medium shrimp, peeled and deveined

3/4 lb. Chicken breast meat cut into bite sized pieces

3/4 lb. Crawfish tails thawed

1/2 lb. Diced ham

3 Cups rice

1 Medium diced onion

1 Medium diced green pepper

1/2 cup chopped celery

1 Tbs. minced garlic

2 Tsp. hot sauce

2 Tbs. parsley flakes

1 Tsp.thyme

1 Tsp ground pepper

1/2 Tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 Tsp salt

2 bay leafs

5 Tbs. New Orleans Style Sea food & Chicken seasoning (optional)

1/3 Cup White Zinfandel wine

Directions

In a large (10 quart would be safe) Dutch oven begin by frying up 4 pieces of bacon, when crispy remove chop up fine and put in a large bowl and set aside. In the bacon grease cook up Andouille sausage until about 90 percent fully cooked, remove sausage and place in bowl with bacon and set aside. In Andouille drippings cook chicken bite size pieces that have been seasoned with New Orleans style Sea food & Chicken seasoning until 90 percent done then place in bowl with the bacon and sausage and set aside. Add the diced cooked ham to the bowl.

In the meat drippings, on medium heat, sautee 1 chopped medium green pepper for about 3 minutes, then add 1/2 a cup of chopped celery and 1 medium onion and 1 Tbs. minced garlic sautee until onion is soft and translucent. onion is done add a bowl of the following ingredients: 28 oz of diced tomatoes, 16 oz tomato sauce, 1 tsp. thyme, 1tsp.ground black pepper,1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper, 1/2 tsp. salt, 2 bay leafs and 2 tsp. hot sauce. Bring mixture to a boil and add all meat in bowl (But not shrimp or crawfish). Next add 5 2/3 cups of chicken broth and 1/3 cups wine bring to a boil. Add rice and set to low and simmer for 20 minutes. Next add crawfish (unseasoned) and shrimp seasoned with New Orleans style Sea food & Chicken seasoning. Simmer for about 8 more minutes turn off stove, wait about 10 minutes with pan covered. Check and make sure shrimp is pink, if not simmer 5 more minutes until they are. When pink serve!

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