HOW TO MAKE JAMBALAYA KAT'S DAD LIKED ONCE.... gettin' ready for Mardi Gras!....

Here's how I make up a Jambalaya....
Chop up about a cup each of green pepper, yellow onion, celery, and around four cloves of garlic real fine. Start up a full stick of butter with a couple of ounces of flour, stirring and stirring together on low heat until it's dark golden honey brown, but not a nutty brown. Saute the veges above in olive oil until they are just soft. Mix the flour/butter and the veges together and stir and stir. When they're mixed, add about three cups of chicken broth, fresh as can be, if possible - tho bullion cubes will work OK in a pinch. Stir and Stir some more...add more chicken broth as needed to keep it thick but soupy - more like a stew broth...stir for about twenty minutes...add in cubed chicken...about two breasts and two thighs worth...in the meantime, have cooked up white short-grained rice - 3/4 cups worth, raw....have it warm and fluffy and ready to go. At this point, I add canned plum tomatoes, as many as I'd like, all cut up, and their 'water', to the broth portion and stir and stir some more. I also add the Cajun Spices at this point: marjoram: a pinch of cumin; sometimes a bit of file if the broth is too thin, but usually not; salt and pepper; garlic powder; onion powder; hot flakes of peppers of choice to taste for heat; celery salt; dried or fresh parsley chopped really fine; and some grated nutmeg. I just keep adding these until I'm satisfied with the broth taste...can't say that is or is not the best way to decide upon that....then you can add other chopped veges or even seafood if you want, but you know, the Cajun way is not to do that unless you're specially hungry for it all, or have way too many folks to feed. If you have Many Folks to Feed, then you just throw in everything but the kitchen sink, and maybe that, as well! Otherwise, keep it simple...Now, mix the sauce and chicken/tomatoes with the rice, sprinkle some pepper flakes on top, and serve nice and hot. Now, this is a real Jambalaya, but hey, I suppose they all are. Everybody who has a good recipe got theirs from the old-timers, and they all swear by theirs as bein' the very best. to each his or her own. this is the one I served my Dad when he came to visit here in California, and he said it was Perfect. he was a man who over-complimented, though. so who knows!?!
Now you're gettin' ready for Mardi Gras, big times, right??!!!!! ....Kat