Side Dish Stagnation? Spicy Tomato Rice to the Rescue!

This short and fascinating video recipe for spicy tomato rice will hopefully add a very nice, all-purpose side dish to your repertoire. Believe it or not, Chefs have a much tougher time coming up with starchy side dishes for meals than they do with the main items. Is this an issue for you as well?

This is probably due to the fact that new recipes for main courses seem almost infinite. At last count there were 2,769,241 ways to cook a chicken. By the way, while I typed that last sentence, 793 new ways to cook chicken were just invented.

Side dishes are another story. I do about five or six variations on mashed potatoes and that's it. Seems you can only do so many things to make it interesting before you run out of ideas. Kind of like Survivor. So, don't underestimate the importance of adding a new side dish to your arsenal.

This Spanish rice-inspired spicy tomato rice recipe is super easy to make, and is always a crowd-pleaser. When was the last time you had Spanish rice? The last time you went to Spain? That time you went to that Mexican place for that thing with those guys? If you can't recall, then it's time to watch this video and get busy. Enjoy!




Ingredients:
1 tbsp of butter
2 cups of white, long-grain rice
1/3 cup diced jalapenos
1/3 cup diced green onions
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp chili powder or paprika
1/2 tsp chipotle and/or cayenne
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/4 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup of tomato sauce


Do you have a rice cooking phobia? You're not alone! You may want to watch my How to Make Perfect White Rice video recipe.




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Celebrate the New Year with the Black-Eyed Peas - Let's Get it Started!

I know I just posted an Italian alternative to the New Years' beans and greens, eaten to bring prosperity in 2009, but I figured I'd better do a more traditional version. I am the American food expert on About.com after all, and it would have been bad form not to post a real black-eyed peas recipe today.

This is a very old tradition, and I don't mean like pre-civil war American south old, I mean really, really old. There are records of black-eyed peas being eaten for good luck on New Year's Day all the way back to ancient Babylonia. For you kids out there, that's way before even cell phones were invented!

This video recipe you are about to visually consume is a variation on something called "Hoppin' John," which is black-eyed peas, rice, and pork stewed together, usually served with some kind of greens and cornbread. For your convenience, and my pageviews, I suggest also clicking on my cornbread recipe video and doing this thing right.

I want to wish you all a Happy New Year! May your 2009 be filled with happiness, new experiences, and exciting challenges. 2008 was a very hard year for everyone, but I have it on a pretty reliable source (a Chef's intuition is a powerful thing) that this coming year will be a lot better. Until then, I'll leave you with this thought - the tougher times are, the better food tastes. Enjoy!


Ingredients:
1 pound black-eyed peas, soaked overnight
3 strips bacon, sliced in 1/2-inch pieces
1 pound pork neck bones
6 oz smoked ham, diced
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced celery
1 cup diced carrot
3 cloves chopped garlic
6 cups water
1 (10-oz can) diced tomato with green chilis
1 tsp salt
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp black pepper
cayenne to taste
1 tsp dried thyme
1 large bunch kale, leaves torn
cooked rice

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Free Rice - It's So…What's the Word I'm Looking For?

I wanted to let you guys know about freerice.com, a brilliant and very addictive vocabulary-building website that donates rice to the U.N. World Food Program based on your performance.

For each answer you get right, they donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but the game is so addictive that by the time you're done you will have provided enough free rice to feed a small country.

Tis' the season for doing kind things for others, and what better way than helping fight world hunger playing a game and learning new words? Please check it out, and pass along the Free Rice URL to others. Enjoy!

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Spicy Shrimp Etouffee - If You're Texting the Recipe Just Enter "A2FEY"

For whatever reason, I've recently been on a Cajun/Creole cooking kick. Here's the finished shrimp etouffee video recipe I promised last week, and man, was it good! Etouffee is one of New Orleans' most famous dishes - it's spicy (or can be), aromatic, brightly flavored, and very comforting, all at the same time.

Etouffee comes from the French word for "smothered," and I would describe the dish as a rich, shrimp gravy served with rice. In general, Creole cooking is not that common for the average home cook. I think, from a distance, it may look like Creole cooking is fairly complicated. While some recipes do have lots of steps, most of the classics, like this shrimp etouffee, are quite simple to make.

Speaking of famous New Orleans recipes, folks in my age group may remember with some amusement, the blackened redfish craze from the early eighties. Chef Paul Prudhomme, of K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, introduced America to that old Cajun favorite, blackened fish. It was later discovered it wasn't even a Cajun recipe, but that's a chef for you - we never let the facts get in the way of a great story.

This was a smoke alarm's dream recipe. Blackened redfish is basically a fillet covered in spicy dry rub, and seared on a red-hot cast iron pan. This is a great recipe when made under a massive restaurant exhaust fan. At home, it produced copious amount of smoke, which forced many a chef outdoors. Anyway, enjoy the video and be sure to give this easy, and smoke-free, recipe a try!
Click here for ingredients and transcript

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Creole Sausage and Shrimp Jambalaya with a Side of Newman

As you long time viewers know, I'm a huge Seinfeld fan, and being a chef, one of my favorite episodes is The Soup Nazi. Today's video recipe features Newman's personal favorite, jambalaya. While true jambalaya is really more of a thicker rice stew, than a soup, it's one of those dishes that more stock can be added to easily make it into a soup recipe (and feed more people, of course). I'm not sure where the myth arose that Creole and Cajun food was complicated to make. Much like French, Chinese, and Italian cuisine, the best, and most popular dishes are actually the easiest to make.

This recipe is a perfect example. There's really not much chopping, there's only a couple steps, and it's a very easy recipe to alter and adjust to your tastes. This is a perfect dinner party dish, since once it's simmering, you can enjoy the party, and not have to fuss around in the kitchen.

Speaking of dinner parties, one interesting tidbit regarding jambalaya you can fascinate your guests with has to do with the name. No one really knows the true origins of the term "jambalaya," which means I always repeat the most entertaining version.

This is from the Dictionary of American Food and Drink:
Late one evening a traveling gentleman stopped by a New Orleans inn which had little food remaining from the evening meal. The traveler instructed the cook, "Jean, balayez!" or "Jean, sweep something together!" in the local dialect. The guest pronounced the resulting hodge-podge dish as "Jean balayez."

Hey, it could of happened. Enjoy!



Ingredients:
2 tbsp butter
8 oz Andouille sausage, or other spicy smoked sausage, sliced 1/4" thick
2 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 bay leaf
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup diced tomato, fresh or canned
1 large green bell pepper, diced
2 ribs celery, sliced 1/4" thick
4 green onions, sliced thin
1 cup brown rice
3 cups chicken broth
1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined

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