Dimanche Gras

The past few weeks have been a complete whirlwind. Between traveling to job interviews for jobs for the fall, work trips for my current jobs and trips to visit friends to reminisce about the good old college days (in 2009.), I’ve been out of town at least once a week for the past two months. On Friday I got home from my last trip for a while, and I was pretty spent. On Sunday Mary asked me what I had done all weekend and at first I couldn’t remember, but then I realized I couldn’t remember because I had literally done nothing. I went to a couple of yoga classes and took some walks with my dog, but otherwise I was parked in front of a Say Yes to the Dress marathon. In tears. Take it from me, the life of a college graduate is pretty exciting.

Mary works weekends, so by Sunday night she was craving some comfort food, and I was right there with her. I’ve been taking adult education French classes at the local high school since I had a hard time letting go of college life, and since Mardi Gras was just yesterday (or so it seems), we had spent some time in my French class talking about traditions in Louisiana. Obviously jumbalaya was talked about at great length, so I convinced Mary that we should try to make it ourselves. It might not be considered comfort food in our region of the United States, but it is to many people in the South so we were game.

We compiled a few recipes, including my experience making (ok… watching someone else make) jumbalaya for 15 high school students in the middle of the woods and came up with a recipe suited to our tastes and went to work.

Ingredients

1 T. peanut oil

2 t. Creole seasoning

16 oz. package andouille sausage

1/4 large onion, diced

1/4 large green bell pepper, diced

1 stalk of celery, diced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

4 T. tomato aste

16 oz. can crushed tomatoes

1/4 t. red pepper flakes

1/4 t. ground black pepper

3/4 t. salt

1 1/4 t. Worchestershire sauce

1 c. uncooked white rice

3 c. chicken broth

1. Slice the sausage into rounds. Heat the peanut oil in a wok, Dutch oven, or large pot, and add the sausage and Creole seasoning. Sautee until the sausages are browned. Remove the sausages from the wok, leaving the oils in the wok.

2. In the same wok, sauté the onions, pepper, celery and garlic until tender. Stir in the tomato paste and cook for about two minutes before

adding the crushed tomatoes. Add the red pepper flakes, black pepper, salt and Worcestershire sauce. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Stir in the rice, then add the chicken broth. Let simmer for about 25 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. If the broth boils off completely, add more. The Jumbalaya should not be soupy, but it should have some movement to it.