Creole Style Jambalaya

First time cooking in a new kitchen is always an experience, but my first time today went well. I’ve been so busy with all the work we haven’t eaten anything proper in a few days, so today after my day shift I finally could take time and relax in the kitchen. Indeed, cooking is often relaxing for me, especially when I can try something new. I find cooking foods I know by heart more boring, therefore I’m always eager to try new things, ingredients, cuisines and simply, recipes. Talking about recipes, I got the best possible reward a blogger can have, when a fellow blogger, Miss Minifer wrote how she tried out my Brazilian style rösti, and it came out delicious. Thank you for the feedback, it feels simply great to hear something from people who create so delicious stuff themselves.

So today I cooked the first dinner for me and S in our summer apartment’s kitchen (yes, if I forgot to mention, we’re only going to spend a summer in this place, and then start looking for a new apartment). The owner of the flat has left some things in the apartment, so I was only not cooking in a new kitchen, but also with new tools. Everything went out well however, and the Creole Jambalaya I prepared came out nice and hot. The reaction of S was “where’s this food from?”. I read from Wikipedia that the jambalaya has actually two origins, Cajun and Creole. The biggest difference between these is that the Cajun version doesn’t use tomatoes. Otherwise the preparation methods are quite similar, as well as the usage of meat and seafood. As it sounds, jambalaya is some sort of a cousin for Spanish paella (which I never have done, but should try one day).

I didn’t use any particular recipe to prepare my jambalaya, but used one from Ellie Krieger and one from Examiner as references for the ingredients needed. 

Jambalaya in Creole Style

300g sausage of your choice, like andouille or chorizo (I used turkey sausages, but they are not the best choice)

200g shrimps, deveined & peeled

+ 2-3 tablespoons Creole spice mix (recipe below)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 big onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

1 green bell pepper, diced

1/2 red bell pepper, diced

2 bay leaves

2dl crushed tomatoes (I used canned whole tomatoes that I chopped + their juice)

3 tablespoons tomato paste

1 teaspoon hot sauce (I used Tabasco with garlic)

550ml chicken stock

2,5dl basmati rice (you can also use some other long-grain rice if you like)

salt and black pepper to taste

flat-leaf parsley to garnish

Creole spice mix:

2 1/2 tablespoons paprika powder

2 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons garlic powder

1/2 tablespoon black pepper

1 tablespoon cayenne pepper

1 tablespoon dried oregano

1 tablespoon dried thyme

Mix the spices together. Slice the sausages and place them in a bowl with shrimps and Creole spice mix. Work to season throughly and set aside.

In a large wok, skillet or a dutch oven, heat oil over medium-high heat with onion and peppers. Sautée for 3 minutes. 

Add garlic, tomatoes, tomato paste, bay leaves and hot sauce. Stir in rice and chicken broth. Reduce heat to medium and cook until rice absorbs liquid and becomes tender, stirring occasionally, about 15-20 minutes.

When rice is cooked, add shrimp and sausage mixture. Cook until everything is cooked, a few minutes more. Season to taste with salt, pepper and Creole spice mix. 

Garnish with flat-leaf parsley.

Thai Salmon Salad with Yam Dressing

I think many people agree when I say that moving out from an apartment can be so nerve-wrecking. Today it’s been (again) so incredibly beautiful day that it would have felt like a waste to spend it indoors. That is because here up North you can never know if the summer lasts for three months, three weeks or three days. That’s why every day of warmth and sun should be embraced like it was the last one.

Another reason to get out of the apartment today was of course to say good-byes for now to all the friends. As I don’t know when will we meet again, even though I know that day is not so far away. I felt slightly sad anyway, those people have been very important during the months here, where me an S don’t practically know more than a handful of people. So now, after a day in the sun with friends our apartment is still a total mess, which means  tomorrow we can only hope it will be cold and rainy! Because tomorrow for me means scrubbing, rubbing, wiping, washing, vacuuming, arranging, and finally, packing.

To the point: Sun usually makes me less hungry, which is great, because I sometimes feel my stomach is bottomless. So tonight our dinner was salad. I love salads and I would like to have more of them, but for some reason S is not completely agreeing in this. I assume for a man a salad for dinner is not quite enough to feel satisfied. And because it doesn’t make much sense to prepare different food for each of us, we rarely have salads. This time the inspiration for the salad came from my dear friend who one day gave me a coconut. So of course I had to prepare something out of it! I have never opened a coconut, but luckily the South American of the house knows how to do the thing. And so beautifully it opened, like an egg, by just using a knife. I’m impressed!

I’m also so happy we decided to use the coconut in exactly this dish, because I think we found a new favorite again! Underlining the word we, as S loved it too. I might have told he’s a big fan of Thai food, after I introduced him to the wonders of this intriguing cuisine. This salad was a nice change for our weekly red/green/yellow/massaman/panang curry tradition.

The recipe I took from the newest edition of a Finnish magazine Olivia, and as it’s not online (at least yet), here it comes for you to take and save in your archives! The original recipe calls for fresh mint, but as our market had run out of it, I substituted it with a same amount of fresh coriander.

Thai Salmon Salad with Yam Dressing (serves 3, or 2 very hungry ones)

400g fresh salmon fillet

0,5 teaspoon salt

1 shallot onion

1dl grated coconut

1 English cucumber

100g long green beans

big bunch of lettuce of your choice (NOT iceberg), roughly torn

1dl fresh mint, chopped

For the dressing:

1-3 small, very hot chillies, thinly sliced

3 kaffir lime leaves (frozen or fresh, I used frozen), cut into thin strips

1 teaspoon fresh chili paste, like sambal oelek or alike (use more if your chillies are not hot)

5 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice

4 tablespoons Thai fish sauce

4 tablespoons coconut cream

2 tablespoons palm sugar

Whisk together the ingredients of the dressing and refrigerate.

Open the coconut. Now I did not do this, like I told, so I cannot really tell how to do it. But I googled and found many tutorials which show the proper way to open your coconut, so you might wanna take a look in case you’re not already a pro in this :-) Grate the coconut.

Thinly slice the shallot and cut the cucumber into 0,5cm strips. Boil the beans in a saucepan for 3 minutes, drain, let cool and cut in 2-3 pieces.

Spread the lettuce on the serving plate and top with cucumbers, green beans, shallots, grated coconut and chopped mint. 

Cut the salmon fillet into strips (about 2cm x 4cm) and sprinkle with salt. Heat up a teflon coated skillet over a medium-high heat and cook the salmon pieces quickly, about half to one minute on each side without oil or butter.

Pour the dressing on the salad base and place the salmon pieces on top. Garnish with some fresh coriander.

Delicious shrimp in chili oil

I rarely cook seafood. Actually too rarely, considering that I have lived almost all my life near the sea, in a beautiful city of Helsinki. I do love fish in general, and sometimes get inspired to try some new recipes with it, but other seafood has been for some reason more difficult to get my hands in to. A year back I was crossing the Baltic Sea from Helsinki to Stockholm and it was on a simple cruiseferry restaurant where I surprisingly got probably the best shrimp tails of my life. They were hot and spicy, served in a rich and tasty chili oil.  

Since then I have been craving for something like that. While surfing the web I never came across with a recipe quite like it, therefore I had to come up with my own. This is actually not exactly like those shrimps were, so I think it might still need some further development, haha! You can also use uncooked shrimp for this dish, and in that case remember to cook them longer, approximately 2 minutes on each side until nice and pink.

Here it goes, hope you enjoy!

Some like it hot shrimp with chili (serves 2)

400g cooked shrimp, size according to your taste (I used large tails and smaller ones)

70ml good olive oil

4-6 cloves garlic, crushed and roughly chopped

2 fresh red chilies, sliced (you can take out the seeds if you like, I did not)

2 heaping tablespoons tomato sauce (I used one that was spiced with only salt and black pepper)

juice of half a lemon (or more to taste)

3 tablespoons scallions, thinly sliced

2 teaspoons ground fresh chili paste, for example sambal oelek

salt & black pepper to taste

flat leaf parsley, for serving

crusty fresh bread for serving

Heat up the olive oil in a wok pan or a skillet. Add crushed garlic and sliced chilies and fry a few minutes, stirring constantly, until garlic and chili start softening. 

Add shrimp and fry for a minute. Stir in chili paste, tomato sauce and 2 tablespoons of thinly sliced scallions. Stir in the lemon juice and let simmer for a minute or two. Don’t overcook the shrimp unless you wanna have bubble gum for dinner! Add olive oil if it seems necessary.

Pour shrimp into a serving dish and sprinkle with rest of the scallions and some flat leaf parsley. 

Serve with crusty fresh bread. Actually spanish aioli might go well with this too!