When I made my Shrimp Scampi a couple weeks ago I knew I’d be craving jambalaya come Mardi Gras, and while I was too busy the week of Fat Tuesday to make one of my signature dishes, I was happy to have the shrimp stock I made conveniently frozen and ready to add to this dish. I didn’t want to use my beautiful jumbo shrimp in this dish, but the flavor of the shrimp was still intense!!

Whenever Woodmans has a sale on Daisy Brand Chicken Sausage I always stock up to freeze it, especially when it’s the Andouille Smoked Sauage. Perfectly spiced with the lightness of chicken sausage — seriously, does it get any better?

Here’s how tonight’s Jambalaya came together so you can try it for yourself. Want a shortcut version? Try my Fat Cat Tuesday Jambalaya from the archives!

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups seafood stock, chicken broth or water
• 1 Knorr Chipotle Bouillon Cube (a bit of powdered chipotle or chili powder works too); leave out if you don’t want your jambalaya spicy)
• Juice from 1 can of tomatoes
• 1 cup brown rice

Start the broth, juice and bouillon on a back burner. When boiling, add the rice and reduce heat to simmer. Cover and let this go while you get the rest going. Pay attention to when you started this!

• 2 Links Andouille Chicken Sausage, diced (a regular smoked sausage works too)
• 1 chicken breast, diced
• 1/2 medium onion or one small onion, chopped
• 1 red or green pepper, diced
• 2 cloves fresh garlic, minced (or 1 tbsp jarred garlic)
• 1/2 cup Trader Joe’s Roasted Corn
• 1 can tomatoes (add the juice to the rice)
• Penzey’s Cajun Seasoning (generously, to taste)
• Dash of Penzey’s Gumbo Filé.

Add the onion and garlic to a deep sauté pan (I love my Pampered Chef Flat-bottomed Wok for this) with a little bit of olive oil and sauté until the onions start to sweat. Toss in the chicken breast and sausage and a few shakes of Cajun Seasoning and cook until the chicken is white on the outside.

Add the tomatoes and some more seasoning and toss until everything is coated. Add the rice and the cooking liquid and toss to combine. Reduce heat to low and cover, checking to stir and taste every 10 minutes. Add more cajun seasoning to taste, a little each time.

You’ll want the rice to go about a total of 45 minutes, so continue cooking until your rice has hit 45 minutes.  When it’s nearly done, add the roasted corn.

These enormous shrimp were so cheap it was amazing they were still fresh and delicious, but their seafood’s never done us wrong. Shrimp scampi is actually incredibly easy to make. I like cooking it with the shells because there’s so much flavor in the shells.

To make shrimp scampi, all you need is butter and a little fresh garlic (though a little Tastefully Simple Garlic Garlic can make a great substitute!). Here are some QUICK TIPS for making awesome shrimp scampi:

• Don’t forget to devein your shrimp! And yes, you CAN devein your shrimp with the shell on!
• Be generous with the butter! For ten of these jumbo badboys I used about 3/4 stick of butter
• …and the garlic!! Three huge cloves of garlic and a squeeze of lemon juice rounded out the flavor
• Keep the shells on! Makes them harder to eat, but
  • the shells hold in flavor and add flavor to the butter sauce
  • you can save the shells to make a delicious stock!

I served this over some leftover Chinese takeout rice with a little bit of roasted corn. I tossed the browned butter and garlic with the rice for an outstanding flavor!

Also, a handful of shrimp shells goes a LONG way! I saved these garlic-soaked babies and tossed them in a quart of water to boil for about an hour and a half with a carrot and half an onion to make an amazing seafood stock that I froze to use later (perhaps in a delicious Jambalaya?).

Seriously. Chicken Helper. I know. Doesn’t it look awesome? Yeah, it was.

I make a mean jambalaya from scratch. But Tuesday night isn’t the night to make things from scratch, especially on Fat Cat Tuesday.

Tonight we added a new member to our family, our newly adopted fat cat Pippen, so naturally we needed some cajun goodness to celebrate! And Chicken Helper (Hamburger Helper’s little sister) is a great way to start. But, of course, I can never just let it go like that.

What did I add to give this a more authentic N’Awlins flavor?

• 1 lb Chicken (per the recipe)
• 1 Turkey Smoked Sausage
• 1/2 lb shrimp
• Penzey’s Hot Chili Seasoning
• Dash of Penzey’s Gumbo Filé Seasoning
• 1/2 cup spaghetti sauce (for some proper tomato fllavor; usually I add a can of diced tomatoes)
• 1/2 diced white onion
• 1 diced red bell pepper
• 1 diced poblano pepper

Add the shrimp at the very, very end to avoid overcooking it. Authentic flavor with a really quick prep. Not as good as my Jambalaya from scratch, but definitely a close second in a pinch!

Usually I can’t say enough good things about Patak’s Indian Sauce blends, but while their new Butter Chicken sauce provided an awesome base for what turned out to be Shrimp Vindaloo, it was surprisingly and disappointingly bland. By adding some Penzey’s Garam Masala and Vindaloo I turned this into a really fantastic Vindaloo sauce.

The recipe is extremely simple, starting with the Patak’s Butter Chicken sauce and adding Garam Masala and Vindaloo to taste. First I added cauliflower, which is a favorite of mine in curries of all sorts, a chopped onion, sweet white corn for a great sweetness and some frozen baby peas. Before it was done cooking I added about a  tablespoon of tomato paste to strengthen the tomato flavor and I served it over some steamed basmati rice. It was a great way to turn a sauce that I wasn’t terribly excited about into something really fantastic.

I also cannot say enough great things about my favorite new find, Trader Joe’s Garlic Naan. A couple minutes in the oven, brushed with a little margarine, and *POOF* restaurant-quality naan for dirt cheap. I’m super stoked about the Trader Joe’s that just opened near my house in Oak Park, and you can bet I’ll be getting even more adventurous with my cooking with some of their awesome prepared sauces. I can’t wait!!

Making this dish is super simple. First I sauté about 6 cloves of crushed garlic in about 1/4 stick of butter until the garlic is translucent. To this I add some chopped sun-dried tomatoes (julienned works really well) and, of course, the shrimp. When the shrimp is cooked through, I add the alfredo sauce so the flavors can meld.

I love serving this with farfalle, or bow-tie pasta, but it’s good with fettuccine as well. This one’s always a family favorite.

CONFESSION: Nearly all my über-gourmet ingredients come from the Clearance Bin. I can’t help it; I simply can’t pay full price for gourmet ingredients, and I don’t really care how fancy they are. $10 for infused grapeseed oil? Tell me $4 and we’ve got a deal. $6 for Japanese Panko breadcrumbs—hell no. But for $2, I won’t pass it up. Hell, for $2 there’s not much I’d pass up when it comes to gourmet goodies.

And so gourmet store clearance bins are a dangerous place. Ditto the bins at places like HomeGoods and Tuesday Morning. Where else can you get Black Truffle Olive Oil for $6, a good-sized jar of Vanilla Bean Paste for $7 or any number of really yummy luxury treats? So, of course, when we stopped at a gourmet store during Saturday’s Girl’s Day Out shopping trip I got a couple fun items and, with the determination to use shrimp for dinner tonight, came up with something incredible.

Frozen Shrimp is a tough purchase for me. Brand after brand tasted fishy and weird and so I eventually relegated shrimp to the “extra special meals” category, opting to only buy fresh and do my own peeling/de-veining. Thank the gods I found Supreme brand frozen shrimp. Just a $5 or $6 for a 1lb bag of it when it’s on sale, it’s almost too good to be true.

First I sautéed some thinly sliced red pepper, a leek, one clove of garlic and some oregano in some Basil & Garlic Grapeseed Oil. I peeled the tails off the shrimp and tossed them into the mix. When done, I tossed this with some Kalamata Olive Pesto and served it all alongside some canned Mediterranean Dolmas.

We served this with our favorite wine, Luccío Moscato d’Asti.