Howdy Butterballs!
Long time no eat! Turns out that teaching keeps you a little bit busy, but don't feel singled out! Not only have I not cooked for you in months, I haven't cooked for the husband or myself either. When you spend all your time at work or passed out in exhaustion on the couch, you cook things like spaghetti sauce, tacos, spaghetti sauce, or McDonald's. The beauty of all of these things is that they all pair beautifully with cheap red wine. This laziness also has a tendency to bleed over into weekend days. I find that if I can't put it in the Crockpot with wine, garlic and an onion and expect reasonably tasty results, I will make Papa John's (which would not be so bad, except I would rather pay the $3 delivery fee than walk the block and a half from my house to their storefront to pick it up).
With the holiday season upon us, music teachers find themselves faced with an additional seasonal task of preparing and executing the annual holiday program. As this is the very first program I will be preparing entirely on my own, I find myself flying into a logistical obstacle course. I am so lucky to have the amazing students that I do. They are enthusiastic, adorable and eager to show off their seasoned woodblock skills, and I am already exhausted and we are still 10 days out. The lack of cooking going on in my house has also resulted in a complete lack of left-overs for lunching purposes. Luckily my room has a closet that I keep filled to the brim with goldfish crackers, fruit and bags of popcorn, or I would probably be SOL, and no, not a needle pulling thread (Ha! 10 points for a superfluous Sound of Music joke... anyone?). I recently came to the conclusion that this will probably not improve anytime soon, so I made the addition of dried fruit, little baby hummus cups from Costco and these super fancy quinoa chips! Hopefully this will prevent me from developing rickets.
In the spirit of this busy holiday season, I bring you good tidings of all things spicy. As we go deeper into the wrapping paper, plastic tree and cookie abyss, I find that one more hearty stew or pot roast will likely push me over the edge. I love a good bourguignon as much as the next American, but I also find more and more everyday that cooking with wine is nice, but makes me wish there was more wine left for me when I am finished (greedy, greedy beef shank...). This fact coupled with the feeling of deep and utter dread I felt upon coming home faced with the prospect of yet another dinner made out of some nondescript animal's "burger" sparked within me a rebellious revolution. So naturally, I turned to burger's sassy porcine cousin, sausage! I also was fortunate enough to have in my possession, one bag of frozen jumbo shrimp. Pasta was out, so I settled on our Costco tub of quinoa. Even I was surprised with how good this turned out, considering that I had no vegetables to speak of and was feeling selfish about my cooking "liquid".
To make my faux jambalaya you will need:
1 lb fresh or frozen shrimp, jumbo works best (if you choose frozen, allow extra reducing time for the extra water the ice will add to your sauce)
1 lb pork sausage
1 small onion
1 12 oz can diced tomatoes (I prefer no salt added)
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1/4 cup dry red wine (yep, I thought the sausage looked thirsty too...)
2 12 oz cans of chicken stock
1 cup (dry) plain quinoa (DO NOT use the kind that is pre-seasoned, this is a mistake I have made and hope never to repeat...)
2 cups fresh spinach
Chili flakes to taste (about 1 teaspoon will give you a medium-spicy result)
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1 tablespoon dried parsley
cracked black pepper and salt to taste
For the quinoa:
Heat 2 tablespoons-ish of olive oil in the bottom of a medium sauce pan. Finely chop your smalll onion. On medium-high heat brown onion, and add quinoa to toast it. Once your quinoa is golden brown, add one can of chicken stock. Cover and let liquid absorb. Repeat process with more stock until quinoa is tender. Season lightly with salt, pepper, and cumin (to taste, not the 1/2 tsp. listed above). Add in a handful of spinach at a time, allow the previous handful to wilt before adding another. Cover and keep on warm until your shrimp and sausage mixture is done.
For the jambalaya:
In a separate pan, brown sausage, adding chili flake and powder to taste. Add in tomatoes, tomato paste, cumin, celery, coriander, and roughly a half a can of stock, and red wine. Add in shrimp (if raw, allow them to cook in sauce until pink and sauce is reduced, if frozen allow to cook in sauce until it is nicely reduced, and dare I say it, roughly the thickness of spaghetti sauce). Once reduced, salt and pepper to taste, and fold into quinoa.
Here's to variety most certainly being the spice of life! This time of year, allow yourself to reflect on what really matters most. Whether it's your fat cat, your loving family, a warm home, enthusiastic students, great co-workers, good friends or fine wine, find what makes you happiest and celebrate it! True thankfulness for what we have is the best gift we can give ourselves.
As always, happy cooking, happier eating, love and best fishes, Butterballs! May Santa find your bellies full, glasses empty, and pants delightfully too tight! Mwah!
