Jambalaya

Oak Alley Plantation
 (Interview with a Vampire was shot there)

Café au lait and beignets at Café du Monde

In 2008 I went to New Orleans with my sister and I fell in love with the place. I've been fantasising about this city since I was 13 and read a book taking place there. There was a risk of reality being different from what I was expecting but I wasn't disappointed for a second. It was everything I was expecting it to be. Maybe I wasn't ready for that hot and wet. One thing I can't recommend enough is the swamp, I think if we have had more time there we would have done it more than once, it was amazing.

I could go on and on about the beauty of New Orleans but here I wanted to talk about food. Obviously we wanted to try a jambalaya, and you can eat one anywhere in the French Quarter. they are usually expensive places for tourists, which didn't interest us. Our travel book was recommending a tiny second hand bookshop where you can find French books and where the owner speaks French (and loves it so much, if you go there and have a chat, you won't pay taxes on the books). So we went there, had a chat, found a Cajun cookbook, left. And then I realised it was the perfect opportunity to ask where to eat a real jambalaya. He gave us an address of a dirty dark pub just outside of the French Quarter, maybe somewhere we wouldn't have gone to, not knowing New Orleans. We ordered the chicken jambalaya (we are not big on seafood) and started eating. A minute later a big tear was rolling down my cheek and my sister didn't understand as she didn't find it "that" spicy. A few second later she was crying to. We ate lunch in tears. But we loved it and it's a great memory.

All that to say that I tried to make it last week (following the Cajun cookbook recipe) and we loved it so much I made it again a day later! It's very easy but a fairly long process. Definitely worth it. I didn't make it as spicy, but it was pretty hot.

I don't have the recipe with me, but I promise I will post it!