One of my favorite tricks for eating healthier without feeling deprived is switching up the ratio of ingredients or components in a dish. I’m relying on this premise a great deal since my husband, Les, has decided that now is the time to drop a few pounds and eat better. Am I still resentful that he laid this news on me just hours before the Super Bowl, when I was still in the throes of preparing the fat-heavy foods he specifically requested for that day? Perhaps, but I’m distracting myself by getting creative in the kitchen! 😉
I must have still had Mardi Gras and New Orleans on my mind last weekend when I dreamed up this idea to flip the script on jambalaya, which is usually a one-pot stew, heavy with chicken, sausage and shrimp. I decided to skip the shrimp, wrap the andouille sausage inside a skinless chicken breast with a bunch of Cajun-seasoned veggies, and bake it with a quick and easy Creole-inspired sauce. My little roulades (just a fancy French word for something rolled and stuffed) have the spirit of jambalaya, but with a snazzier presentation and a bit lighter on the components that add fat and calories.
As I was working on this dish, and especially the Creole sauce, an old memory hit me that may explain my fascination with the foods of New Orleans, despite having never had the chance to visit. When I was a teenager living in Colorado with my mother, I bused tables for Sunday breakfast and early lunch at a Best Western dining room. My job, in addition to clearing dirty dishes and resetting the tables with white tablecloths, included running hotel pans of hot food from the kitchen to replenish the buffet. I can still picture how I learned to carry the terribly hot stainless steel pans, balancing two opposite corners on the heels of my hands so that I didn’t get burned. One of the dishes that was served frequently as my shift turned toward lunch was “veal Creole,” and I was mesmerized by the sauce. It was tomato-forward, but decidedly not Italian as most sauces I was familiar with. There was something special about it, and I’m certain that it added color to my imagination about other New Orleans cuisine. For sure, I have to put NOLA on the short list of places to visit soon!
Turning jambalaya inside-out (or outside-in)
The prep work is my least favorite step of cooking, but it is so important to have things lined up and ready to go. The French call this principle mise en place, and it seems especially apropos to apply here, given that Creole food is drawn from French inspiration. You’ll see that I’ve packed a ton of vegetables into this dish— bell peppers, onions and celery (known in Louisiana kitchens simply as “the holy trinity”), plus a few cloves of minced garlic. The chopped veggie bits will end up in a Creole sauce, and the diced pieces will fortify the andouille filling of my roulades.
Andouille, a smoked sausage seasoned with garlic, cayenne, onions and wine, is crucial to jambalaya, in my opinion, but it is also pretty high up there on the saturated fats scale because it’s made from pork. In a typical, four-serving batch of jambalaya, I might cut up a full pound of andouille. But here, I’ve cut a single sausage into small cubes, which I crisped up in a pan before adding my aromatic veggies and cooking them until tender. Yes, I cooked the veggies in the rendered sausage fat rather than in oil, and this was intentional to maximize the flavor of my minimal amount of sausage. Had I drained off that grease and used oil to sauté the trinity, we would have missed some of that andouille goodness, and I only would have spared us 1 gram of saturated fat per serving. It was a fair trade.
The Creole sauce I made here was spicy and flavorful, thanks to Cajun seasoning and fresh garlic that echo the andouille flavors. Flour thickens up the chicken broth-based sauce, and I was able to use up half a can of spicy Rotel tomatoes (left from the queso dip I made for Super Bowl), half a can of regular diced tomatoes (left from a salmon dish I made earlier in the week) plus tomato paste for added depth. This sauce was flavor on top of flavor, and I knew it would be even better after some simmer time in the oven over the roulades.
Stuffed chicken breasts are easy to do, but there are a few steps involved for easy rolling. First, you want the chicken to lay flat, so use a sharp paring knife and a slow, gentle touch to gradually open up the long side of the breast like a book. Next, place them between layers of parchment or waxed paper and pound them with the flat side of a meat mallet until the chicken is about 3/8-inch thick. It should look similar to a heart shape.
Season before or after, your choice.
Letting the good times roll!
Finally, it was time to assemble and bake my roulades! There was one more flavor element that I wanted in my “rearranged” jambalaya, and that was okra. My husband is not a fan of this much-maligned southern staple vegetable, which can sometimes be slimy when cooked. Here’s how I got around that unpleasant trait— I used spicy pickled okra! The process of pickling keeps the okra firm and sturdy, and the sweet-sour pickling added a nice flavor accent to my roulades. I cut lengthwise slits in each okra pod so that I could release the excess liquid onto paper towels, and then I rolled up my andouille-layered cutlets with the okra inside and tucked in a few toothpicks to hold them together.
A quick dusting of flour ensured even browning on my roulades, and then I covered and smothered them with the Creole sauce, baking it with a foil cover for about 40 minutes. My kitchen smelled amazing! I carefully lifted the roulades to a cutting board, sliced them up and served on brown rice with the Creole sauce.
This little adventure gave us some big, bold flavor, and we didn’t miss the extra andouille or its extra calories. Based on my lookup, by the way, each serving of this meal was roughly 420 calories. Probably a little less, actually, as I had two servings of the Creole sauce left over. I used it up two nights later, with Cajun seared shrimp.
Jambalaya-stuffed Chicken Roulades
This is a playful reinvention of classic jambalaya, made a bit healthier by reducing the amount of high-fat sausage and emphasizing lean chicken and vegetables.
Ingredients
- 1 link smoked andouille sausage, diced into small bits
- 1 medium sweet onion, divided; 2/3 chopped and the rest diced
- 2 stalks celery, divided; 2/3 chopped and the rest diced
- 1/2 each red and green bell peppers, divided; 2/3 chopped and the rest diced
- 3 large cloves garlic, minced
- Several shakes Cajun garlic seasoning (use it to season every layer)
- 2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
- 2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
- 2 cups chicken stock
- 1 can diced tomatoes (I used a combination of “hot” Rotel and regular diced tomatoes)
- 2 Tbsp. tomato paste
- 2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts, butterflied and pounded to 3/8″ thickness
- 4 pods pickled okra, slit lengthwise to drain and blotted dry with paper towels
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Cooked brown rice for serving
Directions
- Heat a small skillet over medium heat. Add the diced andouille sausage and cook until the edges are crisped and fat is rendered. Add the diced onions, peppers and celery and sprinkle with Cajun garlic seasoning. Cook until vegetables are tender and reduced, adding half of the garlic in the last couple of minutes. Set aside to cool.
- While the diced veggies are cooking, heat a medium sauce pot over medium heat. Add olive oil and chopped vegetables. Season with Cajun garlic seasoning and cook until softened, adding garlic near the end of cooking. Spoon flour over the vegetables and toss to cook until the roux coats and sticks to the pot.
- Add chicken stock, whisking to release any browned bits in the pot. Add tomatoes and tomato paste and stir, bringing the pot to a slight boil to thicken sauce. Reduce heat and cook for a few more minutes while you prep the chicken.
- Preheat oven to 350° F. Assemble the roulades by dividing the andouille-trinity mixture evenly over the butterflied chicken breasts. Place two okra pods at the narrow tip of the cutlet and roll snugly toward the larger end. Secure the loose ends with toothpicks.
- Dust each roulade lightly with flour. Place a skillet over medium heat with a tablespoon of olive oil. Gently brown the roulades on all sides and then transfer to a baking dish. Spoon the creole sauce over the roulades, cover with foil and bake for 35 minutes. Carefully transfer each roulade to a cutting board to slice them into rounds.
- Serve roulade slices over brown rice with Creole sauce.
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