Redfish Jambalaya: Being an avid outdoorsman and having a keen interest in different cultures naturally made me gravitate to food. After all, the best way to bridge cultural gaps is through food. Recently I made a trip to New Orleans, Louisiana where I was able to combine both of my interests. As I was going to be there for about a week I decided to try my hand at fishing for redfish, which is a species we don’t have in New England. I was also going to take a cooking class with the end result being redfish jambalaya, Yankee style.
Everyone knows the reputation that the Gulf Coast has for great fishing. Wanting to take advantage of this opportunity, I enlisted the aid of Captain David Bourgeois of Big Dog Fishing Charters, located in Lafitte, Louisiana. Lafitte is about an hour south of New Orleans. As I did not rent a car for my stay in New Orleans, I made arrangements to be picked up at my hotel at 5:00AM the next morning. By 6:00AM we were on our way out of Sea-Way Marina, heading for David’s hot spot, which was about a 30 minute boat ride from the marina. Our location was the bayous that make up the Barataria Basin. Before the basin became a mecca for visiting fisherman, it was the home of pirates and smugglers. One well known pirate was Jean Lafitte, the namesake of the town of Lafitte. Today it is well known for its crab fishing and its natural gas resource. Before we geared up, David informed me that besides redfish the area was also home to speckled trout, black drum and flounder and there was a good chance we could hook into any of them.
Southern fish deserve to be cooked with a southern flair and New Orleans is the perfect place to learn this technique. There is no better place to learn these skills than The New Orleans School of Cooking, so that was my next step during my stay in this area. It was 8:00AM and I found myself waiting for the trolley which would take me into the French Quarter and to the school. My class was at 10:00AM, but when you are relying on public transportation, you need to give yourself plenty of time.
My instructor was Chef Harriet Robin, who turned out to not only being very talented, but very funny as well. In this class we were learning to prepare two staples of Louisiana; jambalaya and gumbo. Before we started the lesson Chef Robin explained to us that there were two major styles of cooking here; Cajun and Creole. Basically, Creole cooking is a mixture of the styles from many different cultures, with a strong European influence. Cajun is simple cooking, the cooking of the common people. Both styles use many different spices, which gives New Orleans cooking the “heat” it is well known for. Cajun cooking actually reminds me a great deal of the way my mother used to cook, except a bit spicier.
While Chef Robin taught us to make chicken jambalaya, she informed us that with jambalaya anything goes. That means no rules, which had me thinking about adding beer to the mixture. If I’m cooking Cajun then I need to use a Louisiana beer. Traditionally this dish was made with anything that was available from opossum to shrimp. That means that I will follow this recipe and just replace the chicken with redfish and some of the stock with Abita Amber.
The following is the recipe that I followed and it will make 12 servings:
Ingredients:
- ¼ Cup oil (canola oil, olive oil, vegetable oil)
- 2 1 pound clean redfish fillets
- 1 ½ pounds of sausage *
- 4 Cups chopped onions
- 2 Cups chopped celery
- 2 Cups chopped green pepper (These ingredients are also known as “Trinity”)
- 1 Tbsp. chopped garlic
- 4 Cups long grain rice
- 4 Cups of chicken stock **
- 2 Cups of Abita Amber
- 2 heaping Tsp. Joe’s Stuff seasoning ***
Procedure:
- Cut fish fillet and sausage into bite sized pieces and sauté together in a well- oiled pot. ****
- Remove fish and sausage from pan and set aside, leaving oil and drippings in pot.
- Sauté onions, celery, green peppers and garlic in the drippings until they are tender.
- Return fish and sausage to the pan.
- Add stock, beer and Joe’s Stuff and then bring to boil.
- Once boiling, add rice and stir everything together.
- Return to a rapid boil.
- Stir again and remove pot from heat and cover, letting the mixture rest for about 25 minutes.
- Remove cover and quickly turn rice from top to bottom completely.
- It is now ready. I hope you enjoy it.
*I waited until I got home to prepare this dish, so I used venison sausage as that is what I had on hand. Feel free to use any sausage you want. You can even skip the sausage all together if you wish. Thankfully I was able to find Abita beer here at a specialty store.
** Instead of chicken stock I used my homemade stock made from pheasant, grouse and wild turkey.
*** Joe’s Stuff is a product of the cooking school and is just a mixture of spices put together to save the cook time.
**** The trick here is to do everything in one pot, so choose one that is large enough for all of the ingredients.
The New Orleans School of Cooking
524 St. Louis St.
New Orleans, LA 70130
(800) 237-4841
Big Dog Fishing Charters
Captain David Bourgeois
(504) 416-6260
By Dana Benner