February 25, 2007

Recipe News: Spicy recipes keep winter nights warm

The Mardi Gras season is already here and Fat Tuesday was celebrated Tuesday! It surely must be getting close to spring, although you would not know it by looking outside. So, in honor of Mardi Gras and to help warm you up in this winter that seems to have no end, I am going to share some hot and zesty Cajun-type down-south recipes!
I took a little trip to Chicago with my daughter last week and we visited some of the awesome restaurants that we don't see around here. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner and there were so many food choices that I had to have a glass of Chianti while I read the menu like a small book! For dinner, I chose the Cajun Jambalaya Pasta served over white and spinach linguini. It was so delicious that I decided to experiment with the Jambalaya Pasta and I came up with a pretty good dish, although I don't want to mislead you, this did not come from the restaurant.

My favorite Cajun food is still my own Jambalaya, a family recipe handed down from an aunt who lived in the Cajun country in Louisiana. It has a lot of the same ingredients as the Jambalaya Pasta, but a few different ones, also, and it is more of a gumbo-soup. If you are interested in that recipe, it has appeared in a past column, but is also printed in our cookbook, "A Dash of Grace," available at the Gazette and Telegraph offices.

Includes recipes for:

Grace's Cajun Jambalaya Pasta

Shrimp Creole

Red Beans & Rice

Hoppin' John

Mardi Gras King Cake

Full article here.