More of my Cajun favorites...

Jambalaya with a twist! (Or Cajun Chili)
Ingredients:

2 loaves of french bread for skillet fried garlic bread
3 yellow Onions chopped fine
4-5 cloves garlic
4 Tbsp. butter or oleo
4-5 large lemons
8-10 Roma tomatos or one large can
1 Small can tomato paste
2 green bell peppers or equivalant amount of Anaheim green chilis chopped fine
Several stalks of celery, chopped fine
3 to 4 cups of rice cooked
2 lbs. of Louisana style andoullie sausage or smoked sausage
2 lbs of cleaned shrimp
1 pound Smoked Ham and/or cooked chicken
1 pound of blue crab claw meat or 6-8 crabs cleaned and halved
2 cans of chicken stock
Add water as needed to the mixture in the latter stages
Seasoned Salt, Black Pepper, chili powder, celery seeds,
Chop your andoullie or smoked sausage and the smoked ham into cubes.

Saute the onions, celery, garlic, and peppers in a large iron pot with the oleo until clarifying. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, and chicken stock. Here's where this Jambalaya takes a twist from the average recipe. Add half a handful or so of of chili powder; if you can't bear to just pour it out in your hand add two or three heaping tablespoons. You may want to add a little more later. Trust me!
Simmer this over a medium flame for about 30 minutes while stirring often.
Add your chopped sausage and ham and/or chicken to the pot and squeeze a couple of the lemons. Pour several tbsp. of the juice into the tomato mixture and stir and taste. Now you see why we added the lemons! Slice a couple of more of the lemons, deseed them, and add them (with peel) to the pot. Simmer this for about 30 minutes more then add your shrimp, and crab meat. Stir this often until the shrimp are done. Pour a couple of steaming ladles of this over your cooked rice, grab some slices of garlic bread and dig in!
I made six gallons of this at a gathering a few months back, and everyone loved it!

Stuffed Crawfish Beignets
Filling
1/2 cup Chopped onion
1/2 cup Chopped celery
1/2 cup Butter
Minced Garlic
Salt and pepper
1 lb Crawfish tails
1/4 c Shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 c Shredded Swiss cheese
or whatever cheese you like
1 1/2 tb Chopped green onion
1 1/2 tb Chopped parsley
shake or two of ground hot pepper
Dough
2 c Bisquick
3/4 c Water
Veg. oil for frying

Saute onion & celery in butter until tender. Add garlic, seasoning and crawfish tails. Simmer 10 min or until all liquid evaporated. Set aside and let cool completely. Add cheese, green onions and parsley.

Prepare dough. Beignet Dough-Stir biscuit mix and water with fork. On well floured surface roll out dough. Cut with 4 inch circle cutter. Place crawfish filling on half of dough. Fold circle in half, seal edges with fork dipped in flour. In deep pot, heat oil to 350 degrees. Fry beignets until golden brown. Serve warm. Makes about 16 beignets. May be frozen before frying. Thaw for 10 minutes and fry as usual.

I love the little devils, but they can be hard to find

crayfish in LA, crawdads in CA

:)

:)

They sound delicious!

:-)