Chicken & Sausage Jambalaya: Cookoff Worthy Contender?

[feauxcajun]

Last weekend the Hubs & I went to the Sertoma Cajun Cookoff here in Springfield.  My awesome friend Tara got us two free tickets and I was just itching to see what was there.  I’ve thought about entering, but I wanted to check out my potential competition first.

Comments

[harmonic_motion]

My concern would be if the judges would know as well as you do what REAL Cajun food is supposed to taste like. Did you find out who the winner was? Well, in fact, I wonder if you'd be doing a larger service by being a judge instead of a contestant.

[feauxcajun]

I'm not sure how the judging works in this cookoff. In the Chili Cookoff, there are hundreds of entries, so each team picks a team member to do a blind tasting of 5-6 chilis (of which their team's is not included). THe Cajun cookoff is smaller so it's probably not judged the same way--all the same, I trust the judges opinions because the two items I really liked (a crab & sausage jambalaya & that chicken gumbo) were the teams that placed 1st & 3rd last year. Most of the issues I took with the dishes that were there were technical flaws, like over or under cooked rice, too much butter, burnt roux, etc.

[harmonic_motion]

Ha! OK. Around here, I've seen some pretty weird concoctions called "gumbo", so I wondered how qualified the judges might be, and if any of them would be more qualified than you are.

[feauxcajun]

Well, aside from the fact that pretty much all of the gumbos there already had the rice mixed in, they weren't *that* off. Not like some of the potato-and-carrot-laden "gumbos" I've seen in Florida.