Sunday, February 17, 2008

Jambalaya, white bread style

Every once in a while I get this unusual urge to pretend I'm a chef. I don't have a white hat and matching coat to go with it, but one can always dream, right? Anyway, last night was one of those times, so I opened up the fridge to see what there was that I could scrounge up and throw together. I found some home-made sausages we had been using as brats and some left over white rice, and I purposed to fashion me a pot of Jambalaya.

Sort of.

The first thing I would need, (besides the brats and rice), I decided, was a
can of beans, preferably of the red variety, but black-eyed peas would do in a pinch. Looking through the pantry cupboard, I discovered this was indeed a pinch, as the only thing remotely similar to red beans was, you guessed it, black-eyed peas...

So here's what I did, and it turned out pretty tasty:

I took one onion, chopped, a diced potato, some butter, garlic and olive oil, and proceeded to fry them to a crisp (browning them will do the trick if you prefer).

Once everything was pretty fried-looking I dumped a couple of sliced up brats (Italian or Smoked Sausage would do just as well, maybe better), and added about 1/3 of the beer I was drinking. I used Rolling Rock, but anything pale will work good - save your gourmet brew for savoring with the finished product. Boiling up this concoction in the beer may or may not have added a genuine Cajun flavor to my feast, but at the very least it got my kitchen smelling like a good 'ol Cajun boiling pot!

Next I unloaded a package of dried onion soup and a cup or so of water into the pot, along with the red beans (yes I used black eyed peas but I'm tellin' you you're gonna like it better with the red beans), and cooked it till the liquid was just about gone.

Just a side note, I find it looks better and is less mushier if you keep the rice separate and serve the Jambalaya-like mixture over the top of it, rather than cooking it all up together with a bunch of broth. Hey, I never said I was a chef.

Also, make sure you dump plenty of Louisiana hot sauce on top and you'll be good to go.