I made this Chicken and Sausage Jambalaya on Saturday (August 30, 2008) as part of my weekend culinary extravangaza while we had guests in town for the Labor Day Holiday! This is my typical jambalaya preparation, and I actually documented it as I went along with pen and note paper so that it would eventually be recorded in the blog and ultimately in my cookbook.

Chicken and Sausage Jambalaya

This story was eventually going to make it out in the blog, and the time is more appropriate now than ever.

Three years ago we were still living in New Orleans and riding out Katrina (August 29, 2005) in the Biscuit Palace which is located in the heart of the French Quarter. The “Palace” is still owned and operated by Clayton and Jeannette Boyer, my in-laws and it has a long history of surviving storms. Built in the 1800’s this thick brick structure has survived many weather events.

Long story short we rode out Katrina in the “Palace” and then went back to our house on the Westbank of New Orleans the day after the storm, and lived there for five more days with no electricity. We finally evacuated 5 days after Katrina and drove 17 hours to Sevierville, TN where we lived for just about a month out of a single hotel room. We finally returned to New Orleans on October 2, 2005 and stayed in New Orleans until we sold our house in January, 2006 and moved to Wake Forest, NC where we now live.

Three years later today and Gustav; my parents evacuated this morning and left their home in New Orleans Westbank at 8:30 am CDT and have gotten as far as Natchitoches, LA by 3:00 pm CDT and are on their way to Texas with 2 cats and 2 dogs. The Boyers still have not left, but plan to evacuate either tonight or early tomorrow morning, still up in the air for them even with mandatory evacuations issued at 8:00 am this morning for all of New Orleans.

The Westbank only got minor damage during Katrina being on the west side of the eye of the storm, however with Gustav the same area will now be on the east side of the storm eye which is the worse side. Only time will tell if this area gets more damage this time around. It had minor wind and no water damage in 2005, but 2008 is a different Hurricane with a different path.

If you have never lived through a hurricane you have no idea what it is like to experience the fear, terror and unknown. When we lived there for the 5 days after Katrina we felt like we lived in another country and cut off from civilization, no phone lines, no electricity, no cell phones, total isolation and no law or order, I supposed like the wild west in the 1800’s.  Scary times and something we never wanted to have to live through again. I was like Rambo and in survival mode, my son who was 10 years old at the time would follow me around the neighborhood with his BB-gun for protection while we scoped out the area for other folks who braved out the storm, but after 5 days of living like a refugee we decided to get out of Dodge! In the interest of safety and mental health Monique and I decided it was best to leave and by 7:30 PM on September 2, 2005 we packed up the car and truck and drove all night. An amazing weight was lifted off my shoulders during that drive, a feeling of relief, as I am sure that those who have evacuated today must feel the same, and tired too!

So, what do you eat and what do you cook during survival mode in the aftermath of a hurricane. You know I had to interject something about food in the CCR blog! We used our camping stove and camping equipment for cooking, we also had limited use of a generator that would run for 8 hours a day to ration the fuel and to at least keep the fridge cool but not really cold. Mostly cooked out of canned food and using up perishable items, but when you are in survival mode you don’t really get hungry much with being nervous and fighting for your life. In the constant 90’s degree heat and 100% humidity all you wanted to do was drink cold refreshing water and eat light cold foods. Cooking was really minimal because it also created heat, coffee in the morning in the old stove top camp percolator was a must however!

My sister Wanda who lives in California had just been visiting my parents last week and originally had a scheduled flight out of New Orleans for today (Sunday), but she moved it up and she and her son flew out on Friday evening. She met two of the Neville Brothers Art and Aaron at Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans for the United Airlines flight to LA, the brothers were also on there way to Palm Springs for a gig. A recent email contained the attached photo, it is a real neat treat to see her in the photo with the Neville Brothers!

Our continued thoughts and prayers are with those who live in and around the Gulf Coast Regions, and our hopes for safe evacuations for all who are still on the road today and tomorrow.

My first cooking venture was during the summer of 1974 and I was 13 years old with not much to do but sit and watch TV all day. The local PBS station WYES in New Orleans would air the French Chef and then the Frugal Gourmet back to back around 10 or 11 am every morning. I got into the habit of watching them most mornings and I was enthralled with their talent and cooking techniques.

I was especially moved by Julia Child in one segment where she spent the entire episode on French Omelets. She explained how the eggs for an omelet are mixed ever so slightly with some water and not milk, that was intriguing. I had always seen my mom make scrambled eggs with milk, but Julia explained that the water helps to fluff up the eggs by creating some steam as they cook in the pan. Her dialogue and demonstrations also highlighted that once you learn to make the basic omelet you can make them in 100’s of varieties and flavors.  She thoroughly demonstrated the “flip“, it’s all in the wrist you know, and that set me off on my real first kitchen adventure.

While home alone I proceeded to break about two dozen eggs before I finally mastered the ubiquitous omelet “flip“! I cleaned up my mess and eggs that were all over the floor, stove and counter tops and started to think of how I was going to answer my mom when she saw all the eggs in the house were gone! Well, she took it in stride and was just happy that I cleaned up after myself, but there was some method to her madness too! I soon was asked to cook breakfast on weekend mornings and sure enough I soon became known for my omelets. Even while visiting at friends houses as a teenager I would end up making everyone omelets. On some occasions we would even make special trips to the grocery for unique omelet filling ingredients like cream cheese with chives, smoked oysters, wild mushrooms, various speciality cheeses and even some wild ones that did not go so well like a sauerkraut omelet.

Fast forward nine years to 1983 and while an apprentice at the Hyatt Regency Hotel New Orleans I was assigned to the omelet station on Sunday Jazz Brunch for 2 years. We would have a station of 4 burners and half a dozen saute pans lined up along with various ingredients such as onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, diced ham, shredded cheddar, shrimp, and other stuff that customers wanted in their omelet. It became a great skill and show flipping 4 omelet pans in sequence in front of an admiring crowd. It was a lot of work standing up for 4 hours straight from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm every Sunday, but I really honed my omelet flipping skills.

Fast forward to today; since we were short on time and had some eggs on hand I made some individual omelets for dinner and decided to make some Southwest Style Omelets with some onions, tomatoes, salsa, shredded taco cheese and sour cream. In just about 20 minutes I had dinner on the table and everyone was happy. I re-told my Julia Child omelet story again (my family really is nice to listen to the story every time we have omelets) and we enjoyed a nice dinner. Ben put some sour cream on top of his and thought it would make a nice photo too!

There are plenty of omelet variations out there and different techniques for each of them, here is my recipe for a Basic Plain French Omelet, you can add your own fillings.

Basic Plain French Omelet 

 Bonne appetite!

P.S. I actually got to meet Julia Child on two separate occasions during the American Culinary Federation Convention in New Orleans, August, 1990, and also during an American Institute of Wine and Food/Macy’s cooking demo event. Here is a group photo of the chefs who volunteered during one of the events with Julia Child, she was also promoting her at the time new cook book “The Way To Cook”  (that’s me on the back row, second from the left)

When I made the Dill Sauce for the Herb Crusted Salmon the other day I had to squeeze out some juice from a lemon so I decided to take a motion photo of my hand rolling and pressing the lemon to break up the flesh and pulp. I have been taking more photos of food among other things like my model trains hobby as well and have started to experiment with the camera a bit. It is nice having a hobby within a hobby, such as food and photography! I have spent more time in thinking up my food compositions for possible photograph opportunities.

In fact, sometimes I get so caught up in the cooking and eating that I forget to take a photo here and there. Or, it’s more like “…oh…I got to get the camera out to capture this before the sauce reaches a boil” type of moment.  Or I need to take this photo before the food gets cold, I want to eat it too you know!

This photo was taken with the self timer and the aperture setting around f-18 for a longer shutter time opening. I thought it was a really neat shot! Especially since I had to time when I moved the lemon in sync with the timed shutter opening.

I have always been fascinated with photography and one of my all time favorite photographers is the French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 – 2004) who coined the phrase and published the book The Decisive Moment which has influenced what I hope to achieve in my quest for photo excellence.

“The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression… . In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif.” — Henri Cartier-Bresson¹

 Here are a few of my favorite Cartier-Bresson images:

  ¹Quoted in Modern Culture and the Arts, ed. J. Hall and B. Ulanov (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), p.473.