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Jumbolaya
East Indian Recipe Fry ham, as for gumbo, with garlic, onion, and pepper; add 3 cupfuls of tomatoes as before, and strain. Have 1 cupful of rice, previously soaked in warm water. Put the rice into the hot tomato, and add herbs to taste. Keep the pot covered, and boil slowly until the rice is well cooked. When the rice is ready to serve, oysters may be lightly pressed into the rice. Put into a baking-dish, and set into the oven until the oysters curl. Clams or shrimps may be used instead of oysters.
The instructions assume you have already read the gumbo recipe earlier in the section, and they leave quantities of ham and seasoning to the cook. A few numbers and one piece of timing are all that stand between this and a working supper.
- The hinge: the oystersOysters need only two to four minutes of heat, and here they are set into rice that is already cooked and steaming. Put the dish in a hot oven, 425F, and take it out the moment the edges ruffle. Anything longer and they tighten into rubber and weep liquid into the rice.
- "Fry ham, as for gumbo"This points back to the gumbo recipe earlier in the section, which is not reproduced here; it presumably means dicing the ham small and frying it in its own fat until browned, then softening the garlic, onion and pepper in that fat. About 6 oz of ham, one onion, two cloves of garlic and one green bell pepper suits the quantities below.
- Cupfuls and the rice ratioA cupful is 8 fluid ounces. Three cupfuls of tomato, strained, to one cupful of long-grain rice is a generous ratio by modern standards; canned tomatoes and their juice work well, and you may need a splash of stock or water if it dries before the grain is tender.
- Soaking the ricePeriod cookbooks commonly call for washing or soaking rice, which was less uniformly milled and cleaned than today's. With today's rice a rinse until the water runs clear is enough, and it keeps the finished dish from going sticky.
- "And strain"The tomatoes are pushed through a sieve to remove skin and seed. A quick blitz and a pass through a coarse strainer does the same work.
- Slow boil, lid onKeep the pot at the barest simmer with the lid on and resist stirring; about 18 to 20 minutes. Stirring rice in tomato breaks the grain and turns the pot to porridge.
- Seasoning"Herbs to taste" in this tradition means thyme, bay and parsley, with cayenne and black pepper. Salt cautiously, since cured ham carries a good deal of its own.
- YieldAs written it will serve three or four, with about a pint of shucked oysters, or an equal volume of peeled shrimp or shucked clams.