Jambalaya

Jambalaya is a perfect one pot meal to make for a large group of people. This cajun/creole dish is a Lousianna favorite and is similar to the spanish counterpart Paella. I made it as a main entree for our lab party. It could feed quite a few people with enough for left overs.

Ingredients

1 pound cut boneless chicken
1 andouille or chorizo sausage, I used chorizo, sliced
1 pound shrimp, raw, peeled and deveined
One large onion chopped
One large green pepper diced
4 stems of celery diced
One large can diced tomatoes
1 cup chopped parsley
2 bay leaves
3 tsp creole seasoning (I use Tony Chachere's)
1 tsp thyme
3 cups rice, washed and soaked in water for at least 30 minutes
7 cups of chicken stock
Olive oil 1 tblsp
salt to taste

Method
Season chicken and shrimp with a sprinkle of salt and creole seasoning. Brown sausage in a large bottomed pot. Remove sausage after browning and use fat from the sausage to brown chicken and then the shrimp. Shrimp should just slightly turn color but not completely cook.

Add olive oil to the pot. Add bay leaves, onions, green peppers and celery and saute till vegetables are softened. Onions, pepper and celery are known as the holy trinity of New Orleans style cooking.

Add tomatoes with juice and cook through. Add chicken and sausage back into the pot. Add salt and all seasonings. Mix well and heat through. Drain rice and add to the mixture. Mix. Then add all the chicken stock. Cover and bring to a boil on medium heat.

Once the rice starts boiling, simmer and cook covered for 15 minutes. Do not lift the lid during this cooking time. Once the rice is cooked and all the liquid is absorbed stir in the shrimp and half the parsley. Cook for another couple of minutes till shrimps cook completely. Garnish with left over parsley and serve hot.

Shrimp Chilly Fry and Batman (The Dark Knight)

Continuing with my dinner and a movie theme here is my review of Batman that we saw this weekend. To go with that here is a really yummy shrimp dish that I like a lot. I especially like to eat this with steamed rice. One can adjust the sweetness by adding more ketchup. I sometimes add a tblsp of vinegar also to make it a like a sweet and sour sauce.This dish is very similar to one I saw on Sig's blog but she makes hers with chicken and adds other things to it. I used to add an egg to my flour mixture but after seeing Sig's recipe without egg I omitted the egg and it worked just fine without it.

The recipe first
Ingredients

One bag uncooked deveined peeled shrimp (30)
1 cup all purpose flour
One pinch Chinese five spice powder (optional)
One pinch pepper
salt to taste
Oil to fry shrimp
One large onion diced
3-4 pods chopped garlic
3 stems green onions chopped
2 tbslp Sriracha sauce
3-4 tbslp tomato ketchup
3 tbslp soy sauce
1 tsp ajionomoto (optional)

Method

Add salt,pepper and chinese 5 spice powder to the all purpose flour. Add water to the flour to make a thick paste. Coat each shrimp with the flour paste and deep fry in oil. Meanwhile heat oil in wok. When the oil is very hot working quickly add garlic and green onions and diced onions. Stir fry. Add all sauces and ajinomoto. Taste the sauce now and adjust sweetness/sourness as needed. Add deep fried shrimp and mix till the saucy mixture has coated the shrimp. Serve hot as an appetizer or eat with rice.

Batman (Rating 5 star: Violent, scary, funny, good acting, great stunts)
So finally this weekend Nits and I managed to get tickets to Batman: the dark knight. Oh and was it worth it or what!! This is definitely NOT a kids movie so if you were planning on taking your kids, forget about it. Christian Bale returns as Suave billionaire Bruce wayne aka Batman at night. However the person who definitely steals the show is Heath Ledger as Joker. He's funny yet scary and given this mentally deranged psychoanalytical side to Joker. There are scenes where I cringed but the scene moved so fast that it was not gory but violent none the same. I had heard a lot about Heath's joker performance but it really was as good as they said it was. A very nice twist to the joker character. I seriously had a nightmare with the joker in it that night!! The plot is typical batman style where batman tries to save Gotham city from the evils of Joker. It has some underlying mafia angle added in which I didn't much care for. Aaron Eckhart plays the good DA who is in love with Rachel (Not Katie Holmes in this movie but Maggie Gyllenhall) . Batman has all the action, stunts and amazing gadgets/tricks. My favorite part was when the batmobile transforms into the Bat bike and he rides it out with his cape flying behind him:AWESOME! The movie is a bit long and may be its one downside. I think it could have been shorter by half an hour. All in all a fun blockbuster which unlike other previous summer flicks had some really good performances. I definitely recommend it.

spicy cabbage and shrimp

What happens and you come home to a fridge that has only cabbage and shrimp: this recipe! Its 9 at night, I get back from work thinking I should have gotten take out yet wanting to eat something a little bit healthier. In the past months with a lot of gym workouts and eating less I've lost a decent amount of weight and now I want to keep it off. So I take my wok and throw these ingredients into it and since I was on a roll I made chapatis as well and there you have it, quoting Rachel Ray, "I had made a delicious and healthy meal from start to finish in 30 minutes". It was surprisingly tasty. I had never put cabbage and shrimp together before and the ingredients came out just right.

Ingredients
Uncooked peeled and deveined shrimp 20-30
half a cabbage sliced
One large tomato
2 tblsp sriracha hot sauce
1 tsp red pepper flakes
3 pods garlic sliced
1 inch piece ginger sliced
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp garam masala

Method

Heat oil in a deep pan. Add red chilly flakes, ginger and garlic. Add Sriracha sauce. Add dry spices. Mix well. Add shrimps and mix into the sauce. The add the cabbage and the diced tomato. Add salt. Mix, cover and cook for about 5-10 minutes. Remove lid and cook till most of the water has evaporated. Serve with rice or chapatis.