(Family Features) Jambalaya is essential to any New Orleans menu and each recipe reflects the personality and passion of the cook who made it. To celebrate this versatile dish, New Orleans’ own Chef John Besh and Zatarain’s – the brand serving up New Orleans-Style cuisine for 120 years – are challenging cooking enthusiasts across the country to a “Jambalaya Throwdown.” Whether its chock full of seafood, sausage, wild game, eggplant, okra or other original ingredients, enter your tastiest, most original jambalaya recipe for a chance to win $2,500 and national bragging rights as the creator of the tastiest jambalaya in the U.S.A. 

“Jambalaya is a mealtime staple in my family,” said John Besh, executive chef of Restaurant August. “This one-pot dish can be made with whatever ingredients you have on-hand; the flavor combinations are really endless. We encourage folks to let their imagination run wild and show America who they are as a Throwdown competitor.”

Looking for ways to spice-up jambalaya at home?  Chef Besh shares new ideas from his kitchen on how to serve up a delicious jambalaya meal with an original twist:

• For a vegetarian jambalaya – that packs all the flavor of a meat-filled version – add eggplant, zucchini, squash, and plenty of onions and garlic.

• Instead of using sausage, substitute ground turkey or chicken with a sprinkling of Zatarain’s Creole Seasoning.  Then, add a couple drops of liquid smoke flavoring.

• Add ham, ginger, garlic, scallions and a spoonful of Hoisin sauce to jambalaya, along with a scrambled egg, for “fried rice jambalaya.”

Home cooks are encouraged to enter the Jambalaya Throwdown contest by submitting their best jambalaya recipe now through July 31, 2009, to www.zatarainsjambalayathrowdown.com.

In addition to the contest, visitors to the Web site will find a “Jambalaya Generator”, a tool that offers a mix-and-match format to identify the best meats, poultry, seafood, vegetables and spices to include in jambalaya. Also, visitors can be directed to sign Zatarain’s Motion for Mardi Gras petition and join the Company’s efforts to ask Congress to declare the final day of Mardi Gras season an official holiday. Signatures must be received by November 30, 2009, to be included on the petition.