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Tom Fitzmorris's Favorite Creole-Cajun Jambalaya
(Visit Tom for New Orleans food insights.)
"As in
many Louisiana dishes, there's a Creole version and a Cajun version of
jambalaya. The Creole jambalaya is reddish, a color it gets from tomatoes.
(The Cajun is brown.) Creole jambalaya almost always contains shrimp. You
can start an argument by making a statement as to which variation is better.
Instead of stepping into that mess, I present here my favorite kind of
jambalaya.
It has some elements of both styles, with oysters giving a unique
flavor. I don't
like the tomatoes in jambalaya, so I leave them out--but if
you added a 16-ounce
can of crushed tomatoes with the vegetables, that would
be okay."
1/4 cup vegetable oil
4 lbs. dark-meat chicken pieces, bone in
2 lb. andouille or smoked sausage, sliced across 1/4 inch thick
2 large onions, coarsely chopped
2 green bell peppers, coarsely chopped
2 ribs celery, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp. Tabasco
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 cups oyster water, plus enough more water [or
fish/chicken stock]
to make 7 cups total
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. thyme
1/2 tsp. marjoram
1 Tbs. salt-free Creole seasoning
1 Tbs. salt
4 cups (uncooked) Uncle Ben's rice (or similar par-boiled rice)
2 green onions, sliced
3 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, chopped
3 dozen fresh oysters
1. Heat the oil in a heavy kettle or Dutch oven. Add the
chicken and sausage and brown the chicken well, till it sticks to the pan.
2. Add the onions, bell peppers, celery, and garlic, and sauté until they
wilt.
3. Add the Tabasco and the Worcestershire sauce, along with the water, bay
leaf, thyme, marjoram, Creole seasoning and salt. Bring the pot to a boil,
stirring to dissolve the browned bits in the pot. Lower to a light boil and
cook for 30 minutes.
4. Remove the chicken. Add the rice, stir it into the other ingredients,
cover the pot, and lower to a simmer.
5. Strip the chicken meat from the bones.
6. When the rice is cooked, stir in the chicken meat, green onions, parsley,
and oysters. Stir all the ingredients and continue to cook uncovered at a
simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring every two minutes or so. Add water,
salt, and/or Tabasco in necessary to get the texture and flavor you like.
Serves twelve.
And now for Tom's Creole-Cajun Jambalaya philosophy...
"The
most fruitless discussion regarding our local cooking concerns the
differences between Creole and Cajun food.
They're really just regional variations of the same thing, using the same
ingredients. They're no more different than the food of any two towns in
Italy
or France separated by the distance between New Orleans and Lafayette.
Two dishes, however, emphasize the differences. One is gumbo. The other
is
jambalaya.
We get one good chance a year to make a direct comparison: at the
Jazz
Festival, they always have two jambalaya vendors. One does the brown
Cajun
style jambalaya, the other the red Creole style. My preference is for
brown
jambalaya, but both have plenty of partisans, and I wouldn't try to talk
anyone into or out of the kind he likes.
The word "jambalaya" is half French and half African. It's a contraction of
the phrase "jambon a la yaya." "Jambon" is French for ham, and "yaya" is
an
African word for rice.
Or maybe not. All of this may be wrong; there's as much argument about the
origins of jambalaya as there is about the difference between Creole and
Cajun.
But I find this story persuasive.
Like many another Creole dish, the main input came from the African side of
its parentage, by way of the Caribbean. It's often been pointed out that
jambalaya
is a Creole version of paella, but I think the relationship may be
more coincidental than actual. There are rice-and-stuff dishes wherever rice
is eaten.
In fact, jambalaya is more like Chinese fried rice than any other rice dish.
The essential cooking step is identical to stir-frying. A good jambalaya
requires browning the meats and savory vegetables to the point that they
stick to the pot
and leave behind the color and flavor essence that give the
rice the distinctive jambalaya flavor.
One of the strange facts about jambalaya is that it is not much available in
restaurants. Many Orleanians do their entire annual consumption of the dish
at
the Jazz Festival. Funny, for one of the essential dishes of our cuisine!
I think the reasons for jambalaya's relative scarcity is that it's a real
bother to
make well at home, and that restaurants can't get away with
charging much for it.
It can be done in a first-class way. That's how they do it at the
Pelican
Club, which to my tastes makes the best jambalaya around. All the elements
are brought up to five-star standards: the shrimp are huge instead of those
teeny ones you usually
get. The chicken is in white-meat chunks, the sausage
is top quality, and even the
rice is a cut above.
But locals can't see ordering jambalaya in a place like that, and certainly
not at
that price--no matter how much work went into it or how delicious it
is. (Some day
I need to write a piece about culinary prejudices that prevent
people from eating
better than they could.)
When restaurants do serve jambalaya, it's often as a side dish. That's a
problem,
too. Jambalaya made to fill out a plate will not be much of a
jambalaya. The dish
is a meal in itself, and should be treated that way."
Copyright 2002 Tom Fitzmorris.
All rights reserved.
Featured Archive Recipes:
Emeril's
Crawfish and Sausage Jambalaya
Michele's New
Orleans Shrimp Jambalaya
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