J is for Jambalaya, Radio, Birthday Lunch, Movies, Réchauffés.

Not only am I doing a Jambalaya recipe today, but yesterday I was on the local radio station, CKWR, once again and this was the recipe I gave them. I was going to be on the radio today, but we are going out for a birthday lunch (no not us) at the Mandarin Chinese restaurant where I will probably overeat as usual. I do enjoy the Mandarin, their food is so well presented, delicious, and the place is nice and clean. Now I have discovered a permanent source of dumplings I am in heaven. Hot and Sour Soup and Dumplings, I can’t go wrong. I like a lot of the other things too of course. They also serve sushi there which I have never tried. I prefer sushi at the coast where there is a source of really fresh fish, here people have to use fish cooked in one way or another. Something I don’t understand is people who pile so much stuff on their plates, a) you can go back as often as you want and b) all the flavours must get mixed up so how can you tell what you are eating. I usually put 2 or 3 things on my plate, depending how much sauce something has. They also serve Western food but I never go near that.

I watched Space Dogs the other night. It was quite a fun movie about the dogs who went into space on Sputnik 5. When the credits came up they were showing pictures of the dogs which had really gone into space. Poor dogs must have been terrified I would think. What a rotten thing to do to animals. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but this movie made me do so although I must admit when they took the dogs out of the capsule they seemed quite happy to see everyone and not particularly cowed or anything. I think a monkey was sent into space as well from what I remember. In the movie they do a space walk, and effect a repair on a satellite. But then they are talking dogs after all so of course they can do such things. Matt would have hated the movie but I enjoyed it. I have another movie to watch, Barefoot Contessa, it must be 100 years since I saw that. Well 50 at least. Ava Gardner and Humphrey Bogart (we used to call him Humpty Gocart).

Having got tired of cold lamb, I adapted a West African recipe I found in order to use it up using ingredients on hand. I can’t really give you measurements, but basically I sautéed a medium onion, chopped, in Canola oil, I added a heaped teaspoonful of crushed red peppers, a tsp. of thyme, salt and black pepper. I then added about 3/4 cup of beef stock, a can of tomato purée and a couple of tablespoonsful of peanut butter. When that was all combined, I added a can of white beans and the rest of the lamb chopped into cubes which only needed to warm up, not cook. It tasted pretty good. It wasn’t the most authentic dish but bearing in mind what I had, it worked pretty well. The recipe I was adapting from suggested serving over rice, which we did.

This may not be an authentic recipe for Jambalaya, but I got it out of a local newspaper years ago and it has been very popular with everyone who has eaten it, particularly a friend in North Carolina who would provide a ton of shrimp (which he had caught) especially so I would make it. He would then take the leftovers and eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner depending how much was actually left.

Jambalaya

2 Servings

2 cups water

1 cup rice

1 tsp salt 3

tsp red pepper sauce (hot/spicy)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 garlic clove, crushed

1/2 lb cooked, peeled shrimp (I usually use a lot more more)

1 cup diced ham

1/2 med green pepper cut in 1 x 1/4 in strips

4 green onions, with tops, sliced

2 med tomatoes, roughly chopped

Bring water to boil, add rice, 1 tsp salt and red pepper sauce. Simmer 20 mins. covered. Remove from heat, let stand approximately five mins til liquid has disappeared. Put in a large bowl. Combine garlic, oil, remaining salt with rice. Add rest of ingredients except tomatoes. Chill a minimum of 3 hours. Stir in tomatoes to serve.

Have a great day