Last night was our first attempt at chicken & sausage jambalaya. J.T. had this amazing chicken jambalaya on the first day of our honeymoon in the DisneyWorld hotel, and I suspect nothing will ever compare. But we tried it anyway. I was giddy to use my blue Le Crueset Dutch oven (a favorite pot of mine!). It doesn't come out of the closet much.

So what the heck is "bouquet garni" and "kitchen bouquet"??? These were ingredients on the list, but I'll be darned if we could find it in the store.

Of course now it's after the fact, but according to , "bouquet garni" is:
"a group of herbs tied in cheese-cloth which are used to flavor stocks and stews and removed before serving"

That's all very nice, but useless unless you know which herbs to use. I suppose I could rely on my so-called experience and guess it's all those normal "stock making" herbs...like, um, well... I guess I'll have to look that up. I'm more of a Swanson's chicken broth kind of girl - which is what we used. And "kitchen bouquet" was nowhere to be found in the online dictionaries, but the recipe called for a Tbsp of it. We used Schilling's "seafood seasoning" instead.

The end result was: great chicken and rice. I think it fell short of being jambalaya. Not nearly spicy enough. J.T. had to add extra hot sauce and chili powder. The other end result was a nicely cut finger from getting the pot out of the cupboard. It's difficult to come out unscathed...

Chicken Jambalaya
Heart & Soul
Rating: Great, despite it not being the jambalaya J.T. knows and loves