Jambalaya

I really like having a food moment where I see something and think, "I can make that...no problem." The most recent occurance of this happened upon a post vacation trip to Freddy's. Jenny and I had eaten our cubboard and fridge bare in preparation for a week on Vancouver Island, and we were wandering the store to be able to eat for the week. As I walked down an aisle, I saw a box mix for making Jambalya. "No way," I thought, " could it be THAT difficult" I had in my cart brown rice, stir-fry veggies, some chicken breasts, chicken apple sausage. CHECK MATE!

Inspiration: Post Vacation Pick Me Up
Time: 60 Minutes
Difficulty: Fairly Easy
Special equipment: Rice Cooker, Heavy duty cast iron dutch oven
Servings: 6 Servings

• 1 chicken breast, diced
• 1 tablespoon Tony's Creole seasoning (There is no other brand)
  
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 onion chopped
  
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped
  
• 2 Carrots, chopped
• 3 heads of garlic, chopped
• 1 16 oz can diced tomatoes (I used 2 cups roasted tomatoes I froze last summer)
  
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire Sauce (Wooster)
• 1 teaspoon Tobasco sauce
• 3/4 cup rice
  
• 3 cups chicken stock
  
• 2 chicken apple sausages, sliced
• Salt and pepper

1. Toss chicken with Creole seasoning and set aside.

2. Heat cast iron dutch oven over medium heat. Saute raw veggies in oil until onions are translucent. Add Tomatoes, Wooster, Tabasco and stock. Bring to a simmer.

3. Add your rice and simmer in your Jambalaya sauce until rice is mostly done. Depending on the variety rice, this could take from 15-45 minutes.

4. Add chicken and chicken apple sausage. Cook until chicken is done - another 10 minutes or so.Season with Salt and Pepper to taste.

Note: I used my rice cooker to make the rice and then spooned the sauce over my rice. This is cheating and the rice isn't as flavorful as if it were cooked in the suace...but I can never cook rice correctly, so I did what I needed to do.

Another Note: You could add shrimp if you wanted when 5 minutes from serving. Shrimp cooks much faster than chicken, and is easy to over cook to a rubber like state. Be careful.

One last note: My Apologies to Ash for a nearly 7 month wait between posts.