Clearing the sinuses....

For tonight's dinner, we took a ride on the spicy side with a recipe for Dirty Rice. The original recipe called for white long grain rice, but I used brown jasmine instead as we have a huge bag to go through from Trader Joe's. The mildy floral rice gains quite a bit of flavor as the grains slowly cook away in a combination of chicken broth and a couple bay leaves. Since brown rice takes awhile, you are left with plenty of time to prep the rest of the ingredients.

I didn't have much luck finding the chicken and apple sausage the recipe had listed, but to keep the spicy theme going, I picked up buffalo style chicken sausage from Costco and used that. Since we've never had them before, we grilled a couple for lunch the other day to make sure we would like the flavor and they were very good! Garlic, onions, crisp celery, roasted red bell peppers and a spicy Cajun seasoning mixture (recipe included in the linked title below!) are added with the chunky pieces of sausage and thoroughly heated through. Once the fluffy rice is done, the two mixtures are combined with some fresh parsley. While this does not have the traditional gizzards and livers most recipes out there include (I can't imagine myself using them... ever!), Jeff and I both very much enjoyed the dish for what it was. Though, since we used the buffalo chicken sausage, it was almost too spicy for us - but the endorphin rush from the heat was fun!

Recipes
Dirty Rice