Hey guys,
To help me with my cooking adventure I’ve been watching tonnes of cooking shows on TV over the last few months. Problem is none of these shows so far have had any dishes that I feel confident about being able to cook; they’re all really complicated dishes, with really expensive ingredients that I don’t want to ruin!
There’s a new show on at the moment, called Jamie’s American Road Trip, and it suits me much better. On last week’s show he went to Louisiana, and made some great American Soul food, which I LOVE. It really got me excited about cooking, so I rushed out and got some ingredients for a Southern style stew recipe that I found on his website.
This recipe uses the trinity of Cajun ingredients that I’ve talked about before (onions, peppers and celery…mmm!). Its makes a really filling meal for about 6 people – I got a few of the girls round to try it (they loved it!), and even had some left over for lunch the next day!
I meant to take a picture of my own attempt, but it just looked so good that I ate it straight away and completely forgot!
[recipe and image from JamieOliver.com]
Ingredients
• olive oil
• good-quality sausages (about 2 or 3 per person)
• 1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 red pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped
• 1 green pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped
• 1 yellow pepper, deseeded and roughly chopped
• 2 sticks of celery, trimmed and roughly chopped, yellow leaves reserved
• 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
• 1–2 fresh red chillies, deseeded and finely chopped
• 10 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves picked
• 1 heaped teaspoon paprika
• 1 heaped teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2–3 heaped tablespoons plain flour
• 1 tablespoon white wine or cider vinegar
• 750ml chicken stock, preferably organic
• 1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients, its really simple to make! If I can do it, anyone can..! Here’s what I did.
1. I heated the olive oil in a pan, and then cooked the sausages in the oil until golden and crisp.
2. I took the sausges out of the pan and put them to the side, and put in the onions, peppers and celery for 10 to 12 minutes, until they softened.
3. This is when I added my spices, garlic, chilli, and thyme. It smells soo good at this point. You need to fry it for another minute or two.
4. After this I added the flour and vinegar, and then a few minutes later the sausages, chicken stock and tomatoes.
5. I added a pinch of salt and pepper, and then let it simmer in the pan for about 15 minutes until the sauce got really nice and thick.
Jamie recommends serving it with plain rice, but I had some friends over and I really wanted to impress them with my new cookery skills, so I whipped up some of the dirty rice I blogged about a few weeks ago (the healthy version!).
I think it went really well, and I am super-confident about tackling more complicated dishes now! I’ll let you all know how it goes!
With love,
Naimah
