Wild Rice Jambalaya

Two years since Larry died. October 2018 to October 2020. Two years, and the grief has settled into something I can carry without thinking about carrying it, the way you carry your own bones — the weight is there but you do not notice it because it is you, and the grief is me now, part of the structure, part of the architecture of being Brenda Novak at forty-three.

I drove past the Lexington exit again. I always drive past the Lexington exit — it is on I-80 and I drive I-80 and the exit is not avoidable, it is just geography, but the geography holds the memory the way a church holds a prayer. I drove past and I thought about Larry behind the wheel with his heart stopping and the truck drifting and the other drivers calling it in, and I thought about the last thing he saw, which was probably the highway, probably the road he had driven a thousand times, and I thought: there are worse last things to see than the road you loved.

The Overdrive column is getting letters. Truckers are writing in — men and women on the road, alone in their cabs, reading my words about cooking and trucking and loss, and finding something in the words that resonates, that echoes, that says: I am here too, alone in my cab, with a slow cooker and a life and the road ahead. A woman from Memphis wrote that she started making the beef stew recipe in her cab and her husband (also a trucker, different carrier) makes it in his, and they compare notes over the phone. Two slow cookers, two trucks, two people making the same stew a thousand miles apart. The image is the most romantic thing I have read in years.

I made cornbread and crumbled it into buttermilk. Larry's thing. I stood at the kitchen counter at 5 a.m. and ate it with a spoon and the taste was the inside of a truck cab and a childhood and a man I loved, and the taste was home, and home was wherever Larry was, and Larry is in the cornbread now, and the cornbread is the visit.

The letter from the woman in Memphis stayed with me — two slow cookers, two trucks, one recipe holding two people together across a thousand miles. That image is why I keep sharing these meals. The beef stew started it all, but jambalaya is what I made the week after I wrote that column, because I needed something that smelled like a kitchen even when I was alone, something that filled the whole house the way Larry used to fill it just by walking through the door. Wild rice jambalaya is slow and sturdy and it does not ask anything of you except a little time, which is the kind of recipe grief allows.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 6–8 hours (slow cooker) | Total Time: ~8 hours | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 lb andouille sausage, sliced into rounds
1 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup uncooked wild rice, rinsed
1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
1 can (14.5 oz) chicken broth
1 cup water
1 medium yellow onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
3 stalks celery, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (adjust to taste)
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1 bay leaf
1/2 lb medium shrimp, peeled and deveined (added in final 30 minutes)
2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped (for garnish)

Instructions

Brown the sausage. In a skillet over medium-high heat, brown the andouille sausage slices for 2–3 minutes per side. Drain on paper towels. This step is optional but deepens the flavor considerably.
Load the slow cooker. Add the sausage, chicken thighs, wild rice, diced tomatoes, chicken broth, and water to a 6-quart slow cooker. Stir to combine.
Add the vegetables and seasoning. Add the onion, bell pepper, celery, and garlic. Sprinkle in the smoked paprika, thyme, oregano, cayenne, black pepper, and salt. Tuck in the bay leaf. Give everything a good stir.
Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 6–8 hours or on HIGH for 3–4 hours, until the wild rice is tender and has begun to split open at the ends.
Add the shrimp. In the last 30 minutes of cooking, nestle the shrimp into the jambalaya. Cover and cook until the shrimp are pink and cooked through, about 20–30 minutes.
Finish and serve. Remove the bay leaf. Taste and adjust seasoning. Ladle into bowls and top with fresh parsley. Serve with cornbread on the side — or crumbled into a glass of cold buttermilk, if you know, you know.

Nutrition (per serving)

Wild Rice Jambalaya — The One-Pot Meal That Keeps You Company on the Road