The ten year old has some strict rules about food. To put these rules into the proper gravitas, imagine Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not attempt to get me to eat a vegetable. Thy starches must be cooked separately - never shalt a cooking starch touch a cooking meat based dish. All animals are good and meant to be eaten... but only two types of meat shalt be prepared together.
It's turned my love of cooking into a mechanical process in which "here you go, have a big old hunk of meat" has turned into a survival tactic. But... I managed to break the vegetable rule and came up with a dish that the ten year old ate and pronounced "sort of okay". That's higher praise than a Michelin star and so, I deserve to publish this with a few caveats.
It's not jambalaya. My grandmother would be terribly upset with me if she thought I thought it was jambalaya. But the kid is in French immersion so that little bit of fiction helped. Second, I don't really get down with measuring things. And third... this isn't nearly spicy enough for me, but this also fed my Dad and stepmother who aren't that into the spice. And finally, I cooked it on my Dad and stepmother's fancy schmancy Samsung stove and I don't have a clue what I'm doing with it so temperatures are mostly set in panic.
Definitely not Jambalaya
A good oil - I used avocado
Smoked sausage - I used about the same volume as the shrimp
One package of frozen shrimp, thawed
Three cloves of garlic, finely chopped. One for the shrimp, two for everything else.
About a cup of peeled carrot, chopped
A bunch of the holy trinity (onion, celery, bell pepper), chopped - this was likely about four cups in total at a 2:1:1 ratio.
Dab of butter
One can diced tomatoes
One can tomato sauce
One tomato sauce can of water
Salt, pepper, cayenne, bay leaves, shot of a good Louisiana hot sauce
Jasmine rice, cooked separately in accordance with the law
Almost everything about this is wrong... but the ten year old ate it, vegetables and all. Maybe the prophecies are true and this is the long awaited Holy Dish? Maybe not. But the ten year old actually consumed carrots, bell pepper, celery and tomatoes.
To start, we're going to get the sausage and the shrimp going. So add some oil, add the sausage, give it a stir and then add the shrimp and one clove of garlic. You'll want your pan reasonably hot here... but definitely not on high. My parents' Samsung stove proved interesting here as the first burner I tried it on seemed to only have two settings - ice cold or fission. When my Dad grumbled about 'grumble grumble grumble, just how it is, grumble grumble grumble, would cost more than the thing cost to fix' I poured us a Scotch and Drambuie because hey, a rusty nail when you're cooking fake jambalaya can only make things more interesting.
OH, and I switched burners. By this time the shrimp was cooked and nicely browned so I took it out and kept it aside. With only the sausage left, I started building the rest of the sauce. I started with the carrot, gave it a nice mix with the sausage and then covered it. When it started to sweat, I added the holy trinity, the other two cloves of garlic, a dab of butter and then once the butter started to melt, I gave it a really good mix. After it was mixed, I added a very small amount of salt and then a normal amount of pepper for the volume of vegetables, then mixed it all up again. How much did I add? I have no idea... I don't measure things. Then I drank a bit more with my Dad and I think we talked about Buddy Holly while I let the fresh vegetables and the sausage get to know each other in the heat of the moment.
I have no idea what was going on with the stove. But listen... I gave up being Catholic for lent a long time ago so I'm certainly not qualified, however I have watched the Exorcist. All I can say is that while I don't know what was going on with the stove... a priest might. But if you have ever watched Chernobyl, do you remember the scene when Gorbachev asked, 'you made lava?'? That's how cooking on the demon felt.
When the carrots had a little bit of crisp left, I added the diced tomatoes, the tomato sauce and the water. Then I added the cayenne, bay leaves and the shot of hot sauce. The stove decided to do its best impression of the arctic circle then, but after the appropriate ministrations to the dark underlord it got really really hot. After my very own mini-Chernobyl experience, I managed to get the damned thing to simmer. Though intimidated by the power of the stove, I bravely put the top back on the pan.
After it simmered for about 50 minutes, I added the shrimp back, mixed well and tasted it. It needed a little more salt but everything else was pretty darned good. After 15 minutes uncovered (during which the stove tried to make both the dish and the rice into lava), I served it over jasmine rice.
The ten year old ate it. That's all I can say. Having stared into the darkness of my Dad and stepmother's stove I came to realize that the abyss was me. Or something prophetic like that...