Travel Journey of the Week: New Orleans

New Orleans, LA
New Orleans, LA

New Orleans is one of my favorite cities in the United States.  It is so different than any other place across America.  The mixture of cultures in this region has created something that can only be found in the delta.  Have you been to New Orleans or have thoughts about New Orleans?  Here is how you can contribute:

1. Each Sunday, a place will be set as the theme (it could be a city, landmark, national park, etc.)

2. If you are familiar with the place and would like to contribute, you will write a post and title it Travel Journey of the Week: New Orleans.

3. Your post can be any medium that works for you; videos, photos, descriptions, itineraries, personal memories, poems, ticket stubs, etc.

4. Finally, be sure to provide a link back here so everyone can connect and share their own take on the place: http://liberatedtraveler.com/2013/09/29/travel-journey-of-the-week-new-orleans/

Travel Journey of the Week: New Orleans

What do I think of when I think of New Orleans?  Food!  To mix things up a little this week, I’m sharing a recipe from The New Orleans School of Cooking.  If you are spending some time in New Orleans, taking a cooking class will definitely enhance your trip.  I learned so much about the cultures that have come together to create the famous dishes with their unique flavors.  The class offers history, humor, entertainment, and a tasty meal.

Recipe:

JAMBALAYA
Makes 12 Servings

INGREDIENTS:
¼ C. oil
1 cooked chicken, cut up or de-boned
1½ lbs. sausage

TRINITY:
2 heaping tsp. Joe’s Stuff or Creole seasoning
4 C. chopped onions
2 C. chopped celery
2 C. chopped green pepper
2 C. chopped green onions or tomatoes (optional)

1 tbsp. chopped garlic
4 C. long grain rice
5 C. stock or flavored water

For brown jambalaya: 1 – 2 tbsp. Kitchen Bouquet
For red jambalaya*: 1/4 cup paprika (*You may also use 2.5 cups stock and 2.5 cups tomato juice instead of 5 cups stock/flavored water.)

PROCEDURE:
Season and brown the chicken in oil, lard or bacon drippings over medium to high heat. Add sausage to pot and sauté with chicken. Remove the chicken and sausage from pot, leaving the drippings in the pot.

Sauté onions, celery, green pepper and garlic in the drippings until tender. Return chicken and sausage to pot. Add stock and Creole seasoning and bring the mixture to a boil. (If using Kitchen Bouquet for brown jambalaya, add 1 – 2 tbsp. For red jambalaya, add approximately 1/4 cup paprika, stock and tomato juice.)

Add rice. Stir and return to rapid boil. Stir again and remove the pot from the heat. Cover and let the jambalaya rest for 25 minutes. Remove cover and quickly turn rice from top to bottom completely. Add green onions and chopped tomatoes if desired.

For seafood jambalaya, add cooked seafood when rice is turned.

7 thoughts on “Travel Journey of the Week: New Orleans

  1. Beautiful photos. As I’m sure you know, New Orleans/Louisiana was a French territory when it was first settled by Europeans. I have never been there but there is a connection to NO from where I live, in Nova Scotia which was also first settled by the French. The British were victorious and NS ended up under English rule. In 1755, the British expelled the French “Acadian” settlers from this area. Acadie was the French name for this settlement, not Nova Scotia (which means New Scotland). Many of the Acadians ended up in Lousiana and the word “Acadian” morphed into “Cajun” over time.

      1. Yes there are pockets of French communities. Some French did return some years later. The North shore of the province and a part of Cape Breton Island have French speaking people and a lot of the province of New Brunswick has French. It’s an officially bilingual province though NS is not.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s