Authentic Cajun Jambalaya

When people think "New Orleans," they also think, "Food!"  New Orleans cuisine is world famous and for good reason.  What do you get when you mix French immigrants, access to world class seafood, locally sourced rice, vegetables, beef, pork, chicken, and 99% of the world's crawfish population?  You get amazing ingredients, a variety of preparation techniques, and a menu that the rest of the world tries to replicate.

The "Big Three" dishes to have been born in The Big Easy are Gumbo, Etoufee, and Jambalaya.  Of these, Jambalaya is the easiest to make because you don't have to cook a Roux.  Let's get to it!

You Will Need:

• 4 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 3lbs Chicken Thigh Meat (skinless, boneless), cut into bite-sized chunks
• 2lbs Andouille Sausage, smoked or cooked and cut into 1/4 inch disks
• 1lb of Raw Medium Shrimp, prepped and peeled
• 2 Yellow Onions, diced
• 4 Large Ribs of Celery, sliced into 1/4" crescents
• 1 Green Bell Pepper, diced
• 1 Red Bell Pepper, diced
• 4 Tbsp Spice Mix.  Equal amounts of each of the following:
• Cayenne Pepper
• Chili Powder
• Salt
• Pepper
• Paprika
• Garlic Powder
• 2.5 Cups uncooked long grain rice
• 2 (14 ounce) Cans of diced tomatoes, with juice
• 4 Cups chicken stock
• 4 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• 1 Bunch of green onions, finely chopped

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and grab your biggest cast-iron pot or dutch oven.  This recipe will make enough Jambalaya to feed at least ten people!  Also, things happen fairly quickly in this recipe, so you'll want to prep, dice, and cut all of your proteins and veggies ahead of time!

Over Medium-High heat, add the oil.  Once it's hot, dump the chicken into the pot.  Stir and cook the pieces just long enough to brown them on all sides. When the chicken is browned (but not yet fully cooked), remove the chicken (leave the oil in the pot), and set it aside.

Now, dump the Bell Peppers, Onions, and Celery (also known in the Cajun Community as "The Trinity"), into the pot.  Also, sprinkle the spices over the top.  Stir and cook over Medium High heat for ten minutes or until the veggies are soft and the onions are clear.

Once the veggies are tender, Pour in the cans of tomatoes (with juice), and the chicken stock.  Stir it well.  Add the rice and stir it in until everything is well mixed.  Bring up the heat until it boils, then reduce it to a simmer and mix it well.

Add the browned chicken and the Andouille sausage.  Gently stir everything together.

Once everything is stirred together and it is lightly bubbling and simmering, cover it up with a tight-fitting lid and slide it into your 350 degree oven.  Leave it in the oven for 45 minutes!  Amazing things will happen in there... The sausage will render it's glorious fat into the mix, the rice will soak up flavors from the chicken, the Andouille, the garlic, etc, etc.  It's a good-time party in that oven!  "Laissez les bons temps rouler!!"

After 45 minutes, the oven-party should be winding down and the ingredients should be fairly spent!  Put the pot back onto the stove and turn it up to Medium-High.  Stir in your shrimp, the parsley, and the green onions.  The shrimp and the herbs cook very quickly so; stir them in, put the lid back on, and leave them to cook for about 7 minutes. 

When you lift the lid, the shrimp should have curled into a tight pink ball.  The rice should be tender and very flavorful.  The dish in the pot should look bright, colorful, and the smell should be nothing short of AMAZING!

Pour this into a nice ceramic bowl and serve it with a cold beer or a cold white wine.  A nice Sauvignon Blanc or maybe a Pinto Gris.  Cajun purists would suggest a Pink wine with lower alcohol like a Zinfandel.  Regardless of the wine you choose, take heart that this dish doesn't need "sides" to compliment it.  It stands, like a beast, on it's own because it has everything!  Veggies, carbs, grain, proteins, salt, spices... Tuck in and enjoy!

Pork Belly Burnt Ends

For my money, the best single "bite" out of a whole cow, is a properly cooked, spiced, and cubed "Burnt End" from the Point of a properly smoked brisket!  WOW, is that good stuff, or what?  Well, God, in his infinite wisdom, also gave us the pig!  Pigs are packed with a variety of tender and delicious bits, and their rotund little bellies are the best, hands down.  What if you could make Burnt Ends from a pig?!  Would they be as good??

There is no more flavorful, juicy, or soft and tender portion of meat than pork belly.  Humans have savored pork belly for years.  Prior to refrigeration, we knocked ourselves out trying to preserve such a valuable morsel.  We finally settled on a process of salt curing and cold smoking the belly and "bacon" was born.  I submit to you that today, 100 years later, we have refrigerators and freezers and while bacon has its place in the world, there are other ways to prepare pork belly!  Some of them might even be MORE delicious than bacon!  There, I said it....

You will need:

• 1 Whole, 10lb untrimmed SKINLESS pork belly
• Chunks of Apple Wood / Charcoal
• Pork Rub
• Sharp filet-knife
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1.5 sticks of butter
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/2 cup bbq sauce
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

Lay your pork belly out on your board and have a look.  What you want is a nicely squared hunk of belly, that is trimmed to a uniform thickness.  Use your knife and square off the edges, and "shave" down the thicker end of the belly if needed.  The end-goal here will be to cut this marvelous piece of meat into cubes that are roughly 1.5 inches on each side.

Cut 1.5 inch strips, and then cut 1.5 inch squares out of each strip.  During the cook, most of this fat will render out and the squares will shrink down to about an inch square, so cut them bigger than "bite size" now.  If you're entertaining ideas of salt-curing this belly and cutting your bacon into cubes, rather than strips, you're not alone!  We'll save that idea for next time, but for now, collect all of your belly-cubes into a bowl and spice them up with your pork rub.

Make sure all six sides of each cube get a nice dusting of your spice rub.  You may have to work in batches, moving the pig from your board, to the bowl, to the rack.  Why the rack?  Well, you could put the cubes right into your BBQ pit, but then you'd run into trouble when you tried to take them off, one by one or whatever.  Besides, they get sticky so... it's so much easier to spray a rack or two with non-stick spray, and then lay out your cubes with enough space between them for the smoke to work it's magic!  You want the fat to render AWAY from the cubes, and a nice dark crispy bark to form, so resist the temptation to put them into a foil pan!

Get your pit cooking with a mix of charcoal and apple wood.  Bring it up to 250 degrees before placing the racks into your pit.  You're only going to leave them in there for 3.5 hours so be sure to preheat first; DON'T BE LAZY!  Close the lid and leave them alone in there for 3.5 hours.

When 3.5 hours is up, your burnt-ends will have taken on a nice dark bark from the smoke and they'll be ready for you to tenderize!  Stack them all, loosely, into a half-sized foil pan.

Sprinkle the sugar and butter over the top of them, and pour over the honey.  Don't give me any of that, "Ken, wait... are you SURE you need to add MORE fat," crap, either!  I'm well aware of the fat content of pork belly and while we rendered a lot of it out, yes, there's still quite a bit there.  BUT... we need a braising liquid to tenderize these beauties and butter and brown sugar go so well together, not to mention the honey.  Don't fool yourself, we aren't baking these as a delightful fat-free snack to reward ourselves for doing some yoga this morning... Think of this as "fuel" for chopping a few cords of wood later, for your family's survival in the Yukon.  ...or to fuel your BBQ Pit.

Cover this goodness, tightly, with a couple layers of foil, and put it right back onto the pit (250 degrees) for an hour.  Close the lid... Walk away...

After an hour you will, flat out, be tempted to just start eating these like so much popcorn, despite the fact that they're "Napalm Hot!"  Hang on... don't burn your face off (yet), take them out of the foil pan and place them onto a serving platter.  Drizzle a mix of your favorite BBQ sauce and apple cider vinegar over the top of them, and toss to coat!

Now, pick one up (I had to use a fork, at first, because they were still too hot) and take a bite!  Hot Damn, Tamale, baby!  A small pocket of liquid bacon fat exploded when I bit down and effectively basted this bite with what could only be described as the tears from a deliriously happy Cherub who had just hit the lotto in Heaven somewhere.  The meat was as soft as ice-cream and it was every bit as good as I'd hoped it would be!  These are extremely rich and decadent, I don't recommend eating more than 3 or 4 of them.  At a time.  And WOW, are they ever great with a cold beer..............