Voodoo Jambalaya - Ready for more Mayhem?

How convenient is it that we happen to have a Friday the 13th in our month of Mayhem?  Sounds like a great opportunity to talk about superstitions to me, and why not put together a great recipe along the way.  What better way to do that than Voodoo Jambalaya? 

1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon thyme
½ teaspoon cayenne (optional)
1 – 1.25 lbs. chicken, diced
1 green bell pepper
1 medium onion
3 stalks of celery
3 cloves of garlic
1 14oz. can diced tomatoes
1 15oz. can kidney beans
1 4oz. can chopped green chilies
1 cup uncooked rice

The first thing you want to do is measure your spices and stir them together.  Be careful here.  Trouble is indicted by the accidental omission of spices from a recipe (oh dear) or by the spilling of salt. Set those aside, and start on the veggies.  Dice up the bell pepper, onion, and celery, also known as ‘the trinity’. 

You can mince your garlic now, as well, but keep it separate from the other stuff.  I was lazy and bought already diced chicken breast, but if you need to dice yours, just cut it into bite sized cubes. 

Heat your pan over medium heat and add a tablespoon or so of vegetable or olive oil.  Throw in your chicken and brown it on all sides. 

Since we’re on the subject of chicken, did you know one must not eat chicken or turkey on the first day of the year lest, like the birds in question, diners fate themselves to scratch in the dirt all year for their dinner?  There are many superstitions about eating chicken on the first day of the year, and most of them basically say that you will be poverty stricken or at least take steps back instead of forward.  Who knew eating chicken could be so detrimental? 

Ok, back to cooking.  Once the chicken is browned, it doesn’t need to be cooked all the way through, remove it from the pan.  This is why we sear the chicken first.  These brown bits bring a lot of flavor to the party. 

Add the trinity to the hot pan and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. 

Cook the mixture for about 5 minutes and then add your garlic.  Continue to stir and cook for another 2 or 3 minutes, or until everything is softened.  Sprinkle on your spice mixture. 

Stir it around for about 45 seconds before adding the tomatoes.  Stir them in, scraping the bits from the bottom of the pan.  Drain and rinse the kidney beans then add them to the pan with the green chilies and the chicken. 

Speaking of beans, did you know eating beans on the first day of the year will bring luck and prosperity?  Ok, so chicken bad… beans good.  Got that? 

I wonder if that applies to chicken stock?  Oh well, it’s May.  Go ahead and pour in the chicken stock and stir. 

Bring the whole thing to a boil and stir in the rice, then cover and reduce the heat to low for 25 minutes, or until the rice is nice and tender.  Stir it occasionally during that time so it doesn’t burn on the bottom, but don’t keep the lid off too long. 

I served it with a slice of 3 cheese semolina bread that I picked up from the professionals.  Although, it was once (and perhaps still is) a superstition that if you found a hole in a loaf of bread you cut, it symbolized a coffin and meant that someone was soon to die.

Perhaps I should have skipped the bread?

Well, as dangerous as my Voodoo Jambalaya might sound, it was absolutely fabulous.  I definitely think it’s worth the risk.  

 

Do you have any food traditions based on superstitions?   

Where the fuck is my autosave??? - The Mayhem strikes again!

I was nearing the end of writing this post (at 3 am I might add) when an internet disconnect and modem reset totally fucked me. Squarespace claims to have autosave, but I'm not seeing my post anywhere. Fuckers. Now, instead of a fun post about how Recipe Guy and I realized tonight that we both list mint chocolate chip ice cream as our favourites, you get a toad.

...

...

Okay fine, ice cream.

His parents have been clearing out the lake house recently and brought back two ice cream makers. Two. And a Corningware percolator (holy fuck they make awesome coffee).

But it was the realization that we both love mint chocolate chip ice cream that prompted us to weed out a bunch of the mint from the garden and start making ice cream at 10 at night.

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

What You Need:

• 3 cups fresh mint leaves, packed
• 2 cups cream
• 1 cup milk
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 6 egg yolks
• 4 oz dark bittersweet chocolate

What You Gotta Do:

Haul up a bunch of mint. Lots of it. Three cups is quite a bit of mint. Fortunately, it's a freaking weed and makes for excellent ground cover. It was getting a little too friendly with the basil though.

Let the mint float around in a sinkful of water (the dirt will sink to the bottom), and pull all the leaves from the stems.

If you compost the stems etc. you're likely to end up with another mint garden, so you might want to just chuck what you don't want into the garbage.

Combine the 3 cups of mint leaves with 1 cup of cream (other one comes into play later), and the cup of milk in a medium sized pan, over medium low heat. Three cups is a lot of leaves.

That pan is tilted and I'm pressing the mint back. Don't worry, like most green leafy things, it'll shrink considerably once it's heated.

And heat is all you want to do. Just until it's nice and steamy. You do NOT want to boil this.

Once it's steaming, turn the heat off, cover it, and run to the store to get a whole bunch of ice. Ice cream, on a whim, late at night, does not always start with all required ingredients in the house.

After 30 minutes of steeping, you are going to have a lovely pale green milk-cream mixture.

Reheat the milk-cream to steaming, and then let it steep again, but for only 15 minutes the second time. By then, all the leaves will be darkened and softened.

Now that you've infused your milk-cream with the lovely minty flavour and colour, you'll need to strain out the leaves.

If you press it all through the sieve you'll end up with the full two cups of fluid, and only a scant cup of mashed leaves.

Return the milk-cream to the pot, and add the sugar and salt.

Put the milk-cream-sugar on the medium low burner and warm it until just steaming again. That should be all you need to get the sugar completely dissolved. Once again: do NOT boil it.

If you didn't have to drive to a corner store in rural Texas while the mint was doing its first steep, you could have done this step then. But we did, so we just turned the heat off while we separated all six eggs. Six. We will be having egg white omelets for breakfast tomorrow.

To separate your eggs, break the shell as evenly in half as you can,

and then gently pour the yolk from side to side as you let the white fall into a container below.

If you accidentally break a yolk, you can just drop it in with the whites and your omelet will be slightly less white.

Gently beat your yolks a bit, and put the whites in the fridge (freezer? are these things freezable??) for tomorrow.

Okay, back to the heat. We're almost done cooking. Soon we can start freezing. But first, to finish the custard. You don't want to go dumping raw yolk into hot green milk-cream. You'll end up with scrambled eggs (samIam). What you need to do is "temper" the yolks. A few spoonfuls of the warm green milk-cream mixed into the yolks

will warm them enough that you can pour them into the pan, still on medium low.

Once they're in you need to stir. And stir and stir. It'll only take of few moments of stirring and genlty scraping the bottom of the pan with the wooden spoon before it starts to thicken. It should not only coat the back of the spoon, but it shouldn't fill in the space if you run your finger through it either. The pic is unfortunately fuzzy, but I think you'll be able to see what I mean.

Okay, now that the custard is cooked, we need to start cooling it.

Remember that other cup of cream? It's going in now, nice and cold. And, if we put the bowl that it's in into a bigger bowl with icewater in it...

your custard will cool even faster.

Pour the warm steamy custard through the sieve into the cold cream.

You'll have to add a bit of ice to the ice bath to keep the cooling going. You could also put the custard in the fridge for an hour or two, but this way only takes about 10 minutes.

While that's cooling, get the ice cream maker ready. We opted for the super retro, real wood, barrel model.

The rock salt will lower the melting point of the ice and instead of having the tin at 0 to -4 degree Celsius, you'll be able to get it to the -10 to -15 degree Celsius range. At least, when I did the ice-salt experiment in junior high, that's how cold we got it. The rest of the world uses Celsius, you'll figure it out eventually. ;)

 Pour the cooled custard into the tin. Doesn't look like much now, but the volume will increase as it crystalizes.

Set it into the maker and start layering in the ice and salt.

Once you've got it all filled and chilling, and managed to get the motor set into place, head outside to the porch. Apparently making ice cream on the porch is a bit of a Southern tradition. Plus, holy crap the thing was freaking loud. We feared not only for our hearing but also for our lives. Rural Texas, late at night, making one hell of a screaming fucking racket. If the neighbours come out, they just might come out shooting!

The other things that were out... junebugs. Dumbest fucking insects ever. Not only do they think that flying directly at people's faces is a good idea, they also are unable to flip themselves over if they land on their backs.

Their continued existence is some kind of evolutionary wonder.

After about 15 minutes of horrible wailing, the motor on the ice cream maker gave out. *cue crickets*

Fortunately, there were two ice cream makers around. The second one wasn't quite the same size so Recipe Guy had to hold it in place as it ran.

This meant that refilling the barrel with ice and salt became my job.

That dumb fuck got a very cold bath. Seriously, what kind of creature dives into a box of salt? Why are these things not extinct??

The new engine was much quieter, and faster, and after a rousing game of "smack the dumb bug out of the air" we had smooth, creamy, minty ICE CREAM!!!

Scrape the velvety goodness out of the tin and into a container. Top it with the chocolate that you shaved and grated earlier (you did do that, didn't you?).

Gently fold the chocolate into the ice cream, and spread it out into the container.

Right now, it'll have the consistency of a very soft soft-serve. You're going to have to put it in the freezer for a while and let it harden a bit.

To keep ourselves occupied, we headed out to the barn. The horseys were all tucked in for the night, but the light was still on. Attracting the dumbfuck bugs. And ...

toads!!

Cute chubby little toads. And guess what cute chubby little toads love to eat?? Finally, we see reason for the continued existence of junebugs. Dumb fuck bugs. Awesome toads.

So, after a while of chasing toads, smacking bugs, and saying goodnight to the horseys, we headed back in to have our nearly-set ice cream.

It was still pretty soft, just starting to harden around the edges, and yeah, another half hour would have been ideal, but dammit, we wanted ICE CREAM!!

Mint chocolate chip is our favourite... what's yours?