Spicy Prawn Jambalaya

Description
A jambalaya is similar to a Spanish paella. This funny word itself is derived from the Spanish "jamón" - which means ham. Jambalaya is a "creole" dish - i.e. originating in the American south of Louisiana - near New Orleans - and is a fusion of French, Spanish, Italian and African influences. Probably dating from sometime in the 1700s.

The Spanish influence arises from the fact that the Louisiana territory was traded to Spain in 1763. The Spanish contributions to Creole cuisine include mixing fish and meat in one dish, hence the shrimp (prawn) and sausage jambalaya!

Here is the Route79 method of cooking this really tasty dish!

Ingredients
For the fish part you will need 250g packet of raw prawns (shrimps). Go for the extra large ones. I know these are expensive - but if you hunt around the freezer section in Tesco you will find something called "Extra large Oz Banana Prawns" - these are £5 for the packet - and are bigger than tiger prawns - and best of all they are raw and they have had their tails left on! make sure you rapid-thaw the frozen shrimps when you get them home - by running cold water over them in the sink for around 15 mins.

For the meat part - you need 120g of chorizo sausage - which you can get from the deli-counter. Peel the outer skin off the sausage and cut it all up into bite-sized pieces.

And then the rest of the ingredients are:


 * 1 medium onion - sliced into 5 cm long pieces
 * 1 large green pepper - chopped to a similar size
 * 2 sticks of celery - chopped similarly - but on the diagonal
 * Some pulped chunks of garlic and ginger from your freezer
 * A chicken stock cube
 * 2 or 3 mediume tomatoes - finely chopped
 * Som peri-peri sauce - or creole sauce - or tabasco - whatever you like to give the spicy kick
 * Some chopped flat-leaf parsely
 * And 1 mug of washed rice (preferably basmati rice)

Directions
So - here goes:

The first thing to do is to cook the prawns. Whatever you do - don't overdo them! Bring a small pan of water to the boil and throw the raw prawns in - simmer them for 3 minutes only - and then take them out - draine them and set them to one side - they will added to the finished dish right at the end. Leave the shell tails on - it makes the final dish look really nice.









Recipe by Route 79
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