jambalaya
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 pounds sliced sausage
1 pound shrimp
1/2 onion diced
1 cup diced bell pepper
1 cup diced celery
1/2 teaspoon cajun seasoning
1 cup rice
14.5 once can diced tomato
1/4 teaspoon diced thyme
2 cups chicken broth
bay leaves
first things first, i totally disregarded the portioning i had planned on using. this is one pot meal cooked in a cast iron dutch oven, it is very forgiving, and when cooking for a big group; the more food the better.
start your fire well before you plan on cooking, you'll need a solid bed of hot coals to get this dish cooked. it'll take a while for the fire to get to this point so i used that time to start chopping the veggies and slicing the sausage. when the coals are ready place the dutch oven on a stable portion and pour in enough olive oil to coat the bottom.
once the oil is good and hot throw in your sliced sausage and let that cook for two minutes or so. next up, toss in celery, onion, bell pepper and cajun seasoning.
cook until the vegetables become tender. then goes the rice, tomatoes, garlic, bay leaves, thyme and chicken broth.
the only issue i ran into was at this point was needing to constantly add more chicken broth while the dish cooked. whether it was because i payed no attention to the amount of ingredients i threw in or because the fire was hotter than it should have been, i'm not sure. either way, constant stirring and tasting will let you know if more liquid is needed or not. at this point everything is cooked so i was just waiting on the rice.
when the rice seems just about done (ten minutes for me) throw in the shrimp, cover and let cook for an additional two minutes. that's it, pull that sucker off the fire, remove the bay leaves and serve!
lessons learned: wash the oven immediately, with the libations flowing i neglected to clean it right after cooking. i spent a fun hour the next evening scraping caked on jambalaya off the bottom of the cast iron.