Ragin' Cajun

As many of you may know, my parents spent the last 2+ years in New Orleans, Louisiana. Recently, I spent the holiday break with them during their last days in New Orleans. On January 2nd, my dad and I finished packing up the moving truck and we headed back to Florida. However, I left with a couple of souvenirs. The first is Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning.

This seasoning is awesome, I put it basically on everything. You will have to wait for future blog posts to see the rest of the souvenirs, this is the star of this post.

Yesterday I took my PCAT, and now am awaiting anxiously to hear back from Pharmacy schools. Also today, I started to write my undergraduate dissertation which I will submit at the end of the semester in partial fulfillment to graduate with honors. My dissertation with encompass my experimental research over the past two years in organic electronics: light-emitting diodes and solar cells. The stack of books on my desk in my office seems to keep growing.

Back to the cajun talk. I have made it a task to utilize each "souvenir" I brought back from New Orleans in a dish to make it stand out on its own. So for this dinner, I started by cooking some linguine.

Then I cut up some boneless skinless chicken breasts into bite-size pieces. 

And then minced some onions and garlic.

And some tomatoes.

I started off by cooking the chicken in a cast iron skillet with a generous amount of the aforementioned Creole seasoning.

I set the chicken aside and cooked the garlic and onions.

OH! Here's another souvenir I forgot to mention, though it's not really unique to New Orleans. While I was in New Orleans, there is a wonderful Whole Foods near where my parents were staying. My mom received an email from Whole Foods about a wine deal that was only good for one day. The deal was a case of "Three Wishes" wine for $24. Yes, that's $2 a bottle. I grabbed one Chardonnay, one Merlot, and four Cabernet Sauvignon. My mom chose six wines for herself to complete the case.

Back to the cooking. I deglazed the skillet with the Three Wishes Chardonnay and then added the fresh tomatoes.

After cooking some of the wine out I added some half&half and a tad more Creole seasoning. 

After simmering the sauce for a while, I added the chicken back to the party to heat up.

My cast iron skillet wasn't big enough for the pasta, so I combined the pasta and the sauce in the stockpot.

Once it was nice and warm, I topped it with some parmesan cheese and commenced eating. 

This meal was awesome, not to mention quite spicy! For a little side note: if you don't have a cast iron skillet, you must buy one NOW. I picked up mine, a 12" Lodge pre-seasoned cast iron skillet with a mitt for the handle for $15 on Amazon. Probably my best kitchen purchase ever. The cast iron skillet can literally be used for anything, and it will never wear out.