Editor’s Note:  Posted Kacy’s EASY VEGETARIAN MEXICAN LASAGNA on the Easy Fish And Vegetarian page -Check out the step by step recipe – You will love it. 

Last week I was having drinks with She Who Must Be Obeyed and Kacy, and the conversation turned to how we could use the Killer Shrimp broth in other dishes so we could enjoy the broth more often.  I suggested that the broth had a jambalaya taste element and wondered if it could be modified to create an easy recipe jambalaya.   

After a little research and tinkering, I was able to create a jambalaya loosely based on  the Killer Shrimp broth. And there you go, Killer Jambalaya.  The following step by step recipe is easy to make and would be a perfect family meal after a day on the mountain.           

EASY RECIPE

Ingredients:               

2 Tbsp fresh Rosemary, finely chopped

2 tsps Thyme

1 tsp black pepper

2 cloves Garlic, peeled and chopped

1/2 tsp Fennel seed

1/2 tsp Celery seed

1 tsp crushed red pepper

1 qt. chicken stock 

1 qt. water

3 oz tomato paste

2 Green Onions diced

1/2 Green Bell Pepper diced

1/2 stick butter

1/4 C Sherry

1 Chicken breast (boneless and skinless) cut into bite size pieces

3/4 Lb Kielbasa (pre-cooked) –  sliced into coin sized rounds

1 C rice

Preparation:

In a large pot melt the butter, add the onion, green pepper, and after a minute or two add the chicken broth, water, tomato paste, sherry, and all spices. Stir ingredients in pot, and bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a strong simmer.  

Slice the Kielbasa into coin sized rounds. Brown the chicken breast in 1Tbsp olive oil, taking care not to cook it through (it will cook with other ingredients in the pot).   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next slice the browned chicken into bite size pieces.  

Place the chicken into the pot with the other ingredients and bring to boil.  Add the Kielbasa, bring to boil and reduce to a strong simmer for 20 minutes.

About 20 minutes prior to serving add the rice, bring to boil, stir, and reduce to simmer.  When the rice is tender the meal is ready to serve.  

Serve this easy recipe with sliced french bread, so your family and friends can soak up the great sauce while they eat.     

AND STUFF

After moving to Ketchum,Idaho I made friends with Michael, a local, who in addition to skiing, was very into fly fishing. From my days in ND I had developed some fishing skills but fly fishing was not something I had experienced. 

During the first winter, my buddy told me all about Silver Creek. 

He told me how Ernest Hemingway and friends would fly fish at Silver Creek, and how people came from all the world to fly fish just miles from where we lived.  Best of all, he told me when spring arrived he would teach me to fly fish.  

A little background. 

When I was a child I had a bamboo fishing pole with line but no  reel (honest).  I would sit on the side of the Mouse River, put a worm on the hook, with a bobber above it, place the worm in the water and wait.  That’s it.  Wait.  Just sit there and talk with a friend, or watch the clouds form cool shapes in the sky, and wait.  Eventually the bobber would get pulled under water, I would jerk the bamboo pull and low and behold I would have a Perch or Catfish.  Not too tough. 

When I got older, we would place smelt or a spinner on a hook, and reel some line off a boat and cruise around a lake drinking beer until there was a pull on the line, and low and behold there would be a Northern or Walleye pike on the hook.  Simple nothing to it.  That was the extent of my fishing background.  Or put another way, simple and nothing to it was an accurate assessment of my fishing skills.   

Then Michael introduced me to fly fishing. I immediately was aware of the fact that I would have to be an active participant in the experience if I wanted to actually catch a Rainbow Trout.  First I was taught the correct arm motion for smoothly casting the line so as to gently place the fly on the surface of the water.  I eventually got the arm movement down, at least while practicing on land.

Next I was introduced to waders.  So, Ok that was a wrinkle, who knew, instead of sitting on a river bank or in a comfy boat, I would be standing knee deep in the water while performing the casting motion to gently drop the fly onto the water.  Why? 

Well, if I understand this correctly, trout are hungry and they have really good eyesight.  So the trout are sorta killing time in the water,  waiting for the mayfly bug hatch to happen. When an innocent little mayfly bug lands on the surface of the water the trout shoots up and gulps the bug.  Hence the reason why you want to be level with the water, to make certain the thick line plays out far short of the landing spot, so that the fly on the end of the thin line can lightly land on the water.  The idea is to mimic the gentle landing of a bug on the surface of the water.    

Well, likely because of dumb luck or my coming across a suicidal Rainbow Trout, I actually bagged one on my first outing. Fried it up for dinner within a couple hours of removing it from the creek.  After finishing my amazingly fresh and tasty trout, I knew I would need my own fly fishing gear. 

Not long thereafter I bought my own waders, fly fishing gear, and an inflatable one person float that I could sit in with legs dangling below in the water.  There were two reasons for the float. Seems that the Silver Creek flows through preserve land as well as posted private ranch land.  So, to get onto the creek we had to enter from the preserve land and then we could float through the private land.  Also, with a float, if we observed a bug hatch occurring down the creek we could ever so slowly and silently float nearer the hatch and place our fly right in the middle of the trout’s private buffet line.

So, Ok in my mind we had made some serious progress toward the style of fishing of my youth; now we were at least sitting.  

With Michael’s help I was gaining skills that would normally take months to develop.  Of course there would be the occassional setback. On one outing I was floating along quietly looking for signs of a bug hatch or a trout near the surface, when all of a sudden the float seat gave way and down I went into the icy cold water.  I saved the rod, and surfaced before water filled my waders.  But I had learned a new, and seemingly critical step in the procedure; seems I would need to pay just a tad more attention to making certain the seat webbing in the floater was securely buckled.  On that day the trout had a laugh on me, and on the way home I picked up pizza.   

You know, as it turns out, it doesn’t matter if the fishing is from a river bank with a bamboo pole or a float with highend gear, cuz at the end of the day, it’s really all about enjoying the beautiful natural terrain and being in the moment entirely removed from the normal routine.

Good Eating and Table Talk,

Roger

 

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