On Sunday, we had a great time visiting with our friends Todd and Juliana. These particular friends hail from the great state of Louisiana and tend to be where I gain a lot of my cooking knowledge. We all enjoy experimenting with food, and even held a “great pork loin cookoff of 2010” one Saturday in our back yard – in case you were wondering, they were all so good that a clear winner was never declared.
Todd and Juliana both cook very well – but Todd is known in our group of friends for his jambalaya. This stuff is legendary – he 
cooked it at an Auburn/LSU game last fall and it was a huge hit. That was where I heard the best food compliment ever – “My stomach is full, but my brain won’t let me stop eating!” I’ve watched Todd cook jambalaya and I’ve even assisted – I know there’s a lot of stuff that goes into it along with some voodoo and special cooking secrets. Now, I’ll never, ever, ever share the recipe for this jambalaya, but I will say that Todd let (made?) me cook it yesterday. He provided the tips and instructions, and I cooked it all by myself. On the left, you can see it during the initial cooking process – right after I added the water to the rice. It looks good here, but the finished product looks much better. This jambalaya had chicken, pork, and sausage in it, along with some
vegetables, spices, and rice. I never realized that a dish as good as this was influenced by the way it was cooked…it almost seemed sloppy to let the meat stick to the bottom of the dutch oven (yes, this is cooked in a cast iron dutch oven over an open flame…I don’t think it’s real if you do it any other way.) But you want a little of that browning to help color the dish, apparently. Folks, forget BBQ, there’s an ART to making jambalaya. And let me tell you – this isn’t a side dish. This is your meal. You grab a bottle of this, Louisiana Hot Sauce to taste, maybe some french bread just to help get the rice on your fork, and a cold beer, and you’re in culinary heaven. I know in my heart that no matter what I do with this recipe, it’ll never be as good as if Todd had made it, but I do hope to fool some people who have never had Todd’s jambalaya. I was honored to have the recipe passed on to me, and hope to make this again in the near future (I have everything written down…)
So how do you follow up such a gastronomic treat? If you guessed bacon, then you were exactly right. We made 
Pig Candy after the jambalaya. What is Pig Candy, you ask? Well, I’ll be happy to share that bit of goodness with you. It only requires two ingredients: thick sliced bacon and dark brown sugar. You take a cookie sheet and cover it in foil. Trust me on this, if you don’t cover it in foil, you’ll end up kicking yourself – this is a promise. Lay out your bacon strips on the cookie sheet and liberally coat with dark brown sugar. Then turn the bacon strips over and do the same. Put this cookie sheet in the oven and bake on 350 for maybe 20-30 minutes – you don’t want this very crispy – the sugar will take care of that for you. Take it out of the oven and IMMEDIATELY put it on a plate. You can even scrape up some of the excess molasses and drizzle over the bacon. But trust me on this one: DO NOT LET THIS COOL ON THE FOIL. If you do, I hope you enjoy eating foil. You can see the end result over on the left. It’s even better than it looks.
Note: Please excuse the photo quality – all the pictures were snapped with my cell phone. I’ll try to keep the Nikon on hand when I cook in the future.
Backyard Stick Burners 