Cajun Casserole

This is another of my famous culinary excesses: the casserole that exceeds the volume of my three quart dish and requires a bit of backup. I always tell myself I'll be more conservative with the number and quantity of ingredients next time, but I also immediately call myself a liar because I know I'll never learn.

Let's see, For a start, I simmered four ham hocks (with about two tablespoons of minced garlic) in a 3 quart stock pot for 48 hours. This made rather more stock than I required for this recipe, and if I was smart, I'd have frozen at least half of it.




I lit the grill and cooked four 1 lb links of andouille sausage. Meanwhile, I sliced the veggies; then brought in the sausage to cool, cooked my noodles, then set the ham stock to boil for twenty minutes to reduce.

So, for the ingredients:

Sauté in olive oil:

1 large yellow onion, diced
4 bell peppers (assorted colors, sold for Fajitas), diced
2 ancho peppers, diced
3 large jalapeños, diced
2 tablespoons minced garlic



Preheat oven to 450ºF.

Add
1 tablespoon Chef Paul's Poultry Magic* and
1 tablespoon Chef Paul's Seafood Magic*
2 tablespoons Chipotle powder
2 tablespoons Chef Paul's Ancho powder




Meanwhile, after you've reduced the ham stock (if I had it to do over, I'd either reduce it for twice as long (40 minutes) or split it and use half, about a quart), add to the stock:





Oh, and you've removed the bones and stuff by now. Actually, I removed the meat, too, and gave it to Barley the Dog-Faced Boy after removing the bones because there wasn't too much flavor left in it after simmering 48 hours. But you could cut up the meat and return it to the stock if you don't have a dog.






2 cans 99% fat free Cream of Mushroom Soup







Stir thoroughly and heat on medium until smooth.

Boil 1 lb package of extra wide egg noodles for seven minutes, drain and rinse with cold water to arrest cooking.

Add
2 lbs shredded Colby-Jack cheese, stir until smooth.

While all this is cooking, cut the sausage into small pieces. You cooked the sausage earlier, I just didn't itemize it quite right in here. Probably light the grill before you start cutting veggies. I cooked the sausages for twenty minutes at the outside edges of the grill with the lid on to avoid scorching and be sure it cooked through.



Combine sausage, sautéed veggies, noodles and soup/stock stuff, and transfer to however much casserole dish it takes. About four quarts of casserole, maybe more, so you'll probably need two dishes unless you've halved all quantities or your casserole dish is coffin-sized.

Top with French Fried Onions and bake at 350º for 45 minutes.**



You can use more or less of things like the Chipotle powder depending on the heat you want in the finished dish. This is not, despite all the hot peppers in the ingredients, a burner. It has a bit of heat that kicks in after a couple of bites, but it's tame by Lobster standards.




*This was what I had on hand. All his 'magic' seasonings are blends of savory Cajun spices. Go ahead and use Poultry Magic on beef, or Meat Magic on fish, it's okay. I'm sure there are specific effects Paul is going for, but I doubt I'd pick them up on a dried spice blend packaged months ago. It gets too expensive trying to keep all of the Magic blends in the cabinet, and they're very similar. Except the Blackened Salmon stuff which is about half sugar and I didn't like on salmon or anything else.

**Okay, I was going to bake this at 450º for 45 minutes but the onions were turning black on the top pan at 30 minutes, so I stopped. I think it would turn out better at the lower temperature, longer cooking time. Probably.