Bad Belly's Shrimp Jambalaya

Lordy! I'm gonna tell you all about how to whip up one of my favorite spicy suppers. It's a shrimp Jambalaya that's super easy to make, although it does have a bunch of ingredients, which to get off on the right foot happen to be these:

1 lb 26/30 ct. shrimp, peeled with tails off
1 lb Andouille sausage
2 c. chopped yellow onion
1 c. diced bell pepper
4 cloves chopped garlic
1 tbsp sage
1 tbsp thyme
1 tbsp flour
1 28 oz. can whole plum tomatoes
2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tbsp. Cayenne pepper
2 tbsp. Tabasco sauce
2 tbsp. fresh chopped dill
2 tbsp. fresh chopped parsely
Juice of 1 large lemon
Salt and pepper
Rice as an accompaniment

The neat thing is that if this dish becomes part of your repertoire, it's very easy to keep these provisions on hand, since frozen shrimp will do, and Andouille sausage does well in the deep freeze as well. However, it is imperative to use fresh herbs. If you need to go shopping, go ahead. I'll wait.

Back? Good. Bad Belly's recipe is more a Cajun style Jambalaya, although in New Orleans you can get a more refined Creole version. Stop the ponies! you say. What's the difference?

Let's back up. In crude terms, you could say that Creole cooking is for the City Mouse and Cajun cooking is for the Country Mouse.  The ingredients tend to be largely the same, except that Cajun cooking was designed to help us po' folks choke down rancid meat. Oh, I guess that doesn't sound so good inside a recipe. Forget I said that.

The term "Cajun" derives from les Acadians, who were the French that colonized North America in the seventeenth century. The Creoles are more specifically the settlers of Louisiana and New Orleans in particular. They were French and Spanish, and their cuisine was very much in the Continental tradition, while Cajun cooking was, shall we say, a bit more rustic. Thus you might find that the thickener in Creole Jambalaya will be a roux of butter and flour, while in Cajun Jambalaya it might be a slurry of oil and flour. But don't worry. We're having the good stuff.

Let's be clear though: we're not having authentic Creole or Cajun anything. We would have to go to Louisiana for that. But we're having the next best thing: home cooking using a rigorously tested recipe. I promise a delicious outcome or I will hang myself. Let's get started.

Using a chef's knife, break the Andouille sausage down into bite size pieces and commence to brown it in a pre-heated cast iron skillet until - wait what did you say? You forgot the sausage on your grocery run?

Don't worry. Bet you have some bacon. You can substitute and that works well. Just run your knife through about a third of a pound of bacon and drop that in the pan instead.

Whether it's the Andouille or the bacon, brown until the fat is fully rendered. Turn the heat down to medium low. Add the chopped onion and peppers and sauté until tender, adding the garlic, sage and thyme toward the end. Season with salt and pepper.

Add the flour and make a slurry. Adjust the amount of flour until the oil is fully absorbed. Add the canned plum tomatoes (crushed by hand), together with any liquid, add Worcestershire sauce, tabasco, and cayenne pepper. Stir. Turn heat to low and let simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the shrimp and fresh chopped dill and cook until shrimp is done (about 5 minutes.) Add the juice of 1 large lemon and stir, then sprinkle with fresh chopped parsley. The lemon and parsley perform crucial magic and make the dish explode with life and freshness that you will want to share with everybody you know. Go ahead. Brag. I do.

(Serve over rice.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Please leave a comment below, or you can email your comments to: myirrefutableopinion@gmail.com. I am looking forward to hearing from you!

Please share...