Jambalaya

At 9 in the morning, Joe Cahn is already thinking about jambalaya. He's thinking about a flaming bananas Foster sauce, and he's also thinking about pralines. These are not typical 9-in-the-morning thoughts, but Joe Cahn is not typical. As the head of the New Orleans School of Cooking, food is his business, and business begins at 9. But even if Cahn did not direct a cooking school, he would probably be thinking of jambalaya at 9 a.m. He has that kind of stomach, connected to that kind of mind.

You can't call Jambalaya, the new revue in the Mardi Gras Showroom at the Showboat Hotel & Casino, just another flesh-and-feathers show. There really aren't that many feathers. Let's be fair, though. While, yes, there is no shortage of flesh - male as well as female - in this production, Jambalaya still ranks several cuts above the average casino revue, proving in the process that it's not necessary to shell out a small fortune to stage a highly entertaining show. Jambalaya has some steamy moments that establish it as the sexiest show in town, but at the same time it is playful, witty and imaginative.

Can't afford a trip to an exotic locale this holiday weekend? Spicy sounds and delicious food, unique crafts and colorful parades await you down by the Delaware River, as the Third Annual USAir Jambalaya Jam brings a heap of Louisiana good times to the Great Plaza at Penn's Landing tomorrow through Monday. Circulate among the three stages, operating continuously from 12:30 to 9:30 p.m., and you'll be able to soak up the good vibes of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band's classic Dixieland, the rhumba boogie piano stylings of Dr. John and Allen Toussaint, the high-stepping country hoedowns of ragin' Cajun fiddler Doug Kershaw, the solid rhythm-and-blues wailing of Irma Thomas, the zydeco blend of blues, jazz, country and Western, bluegrass, reggae and rock that's Queen Ida and the Bon Temps Band.

In the great tradition of Louisiana's improvisational cooking, jambalaya varies widely from pot to pot. There's usually some pork in there - after all, the root of the name is jambon , for ham. And ya is an African word for rice, the grain that defines the paella-like dish. But after those basics (and even they are subject to change), jambalaya is wide-open to a surprising variety of interpretations. In New Orleans, where it's a staple in both the tourist restaurants of Bourbon Street and the porch-side crawfish boils of locals Uptown, it inevitably comes with a tomatoey red blush.

Jeanette Colin wasn't looking for a home when she arrived in Atlantic City in fall 1987. What brought her to the gambling mecca was a production show - the latest of many in which she had appeared through the years. However, Colin did indeed find a home at the shore. The production show was Bodacious, which ran for about a year at the Showboat Hotel & Casino. Instead of packing her bags for a different city when that show concluded, Colin went into Jambalaya, which opened at the Showboat in September to enthusiastic reviews.

The New Orleans Cafe may not be widely known, but its Louisiana cuisine is astonishingly delightful. Tucked away in a converted house in Ridley Park five miles south of the airport, the cafe has been in existence three years. Although regulars may long to keep it secret, the food is too good for that. Owner-chef Daniel Funk's eclectic menu ranges widely from Cajun and Creole (at restaurants, the distinctions are minor, says chef Paul Prudhomme, the expert) to French, Italian and German dishes, although the emphasis is on Louisiana seafood.

Set in contemporary Paris and punctuated by French pop tunes, Alain Resnais' sprightly musical Same Old Song revolves around two stunning sisters and four men variously attracted to and repulsed by them. The characters don't actually sing whole songs, but lip-synch - a la Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven - fragments of chansons by artists such as Josephine Baker, Johnny Hallyday, Edith Piaf and Charles Aznavour. What the interior monologue was to Eugene O'Neill, the interior musical interlude is to the characters here: an expression of their most inexpressible, irrepressible and intimate feelings.

Red beans and rice and jambalaya and funny masks. It must be Mardi Gras. Red beans and rice and jambalaya and funny masks and a string band - at 6 o'clock in the morning. It must be Mardi Gras in Philadelphia. Mardi Gras, the day before Lent begins and the festival that made New Orleans famous, will turn Philly silly tomorrow. By far, the locus of the local festivities is South Street. The perfectly named Fat Tuesday (431 South St.; 215-629-5999) will start its party before dawn with performances by the Trilby String Band (6 to 10 a.m.)

The Dirty Rice wasn't authentically spiked with bits of chicken gizzard, and the red beans and rice weren't one-tenth as good as those I have eaten in a shabby, workingman's bar in New Orleans. But those criticisms aside, hot darn, this Bala Rouge can turn out a pretty good Cajun and Creole dinner. Now, if the new Bala Cynwyd restaurant could only do the same at lunch. At our evening meal at Bala Rouge, the topping on the baked baby Northern oysters (Gulf oysters would have been even more ambrosial)

It's a pity the Geneva Conventions haven't been invoked to end the cruel abuses regularly inflicted on Cajun and Creole cuisine hereabouts - horrible bread suffocating the po'boy, gumbos salty beyond belief, gummy rice, unrecognizable jambalaya, odd olive salads that insult the great state of Louisiana. I have taken to squirming and averting my eyes upon encountering Cajun-themed eateries, unleashed by the blackened-redfish craze of the 1980s, still popping up now and then, often in the worst of all possible hands.

In the great tradition of Louisiana's improvisational cooking, jambalaya varies widely from pot to pot. There's usually some pork in there - after all, the root of the name is jambon , for ham. And ya is an African word for rice, the grain that defines the paella-like dish. But after those basics (and even they are subject to change), jambalaya is wide-open to a surprising variety of interpretations. In New Orleans, where it's a staple in both the tourist restaurants of Bourbon Street and the porch-side crawfish boils of locals Uptown, it inevitably comes with a tomatoey red blush.

It's a pity the Geneva Conventions haven't been invoked to end the cruel abuses regularly inflicted on Cajun and Creole cuisine hereabouts - horrible bread suffocating the po'boy, gumbos salty beyond belief, gummy rice, unrecognizable jambalaya, odd olive salads that insult the great state of Louisiana. I have taken to squirming and averting my eyes upon encountering Cajun-themed eateries, unleashed by the blackened-redfish craze of the 1980s, still popping up now and then, often in the worst of all possible hands.

Nearly seven weeks ago, Joel Grelle's Louisiana home was ruined by Hurricane Katrina, and he was forced to relocate to South Jersey to live with relatives. Yesterday, he demonstrated why he has become so popular with his Audubon football teammates. Grelle was one of the game's most dominating players, collecting two sacks as a linebacker and sparking a defense that allowed just 127 yards in a 19-0 Colonial Conference inter-division win at Lindenwold. A 6-foot-1, 220-pound junior, Grelle also excelled on the offensive line, opening holes that enabled senior John McCloskey to gain 138 yards on 33 carries, including a 3-yard touchdown run. "He's given us a big body, and he's quite a character," Audubon coach Ralph Schiavo said after the Green Wave severely damaged Lindenwold's Group 1 playoff hopes.

Set in contemporary Paris and punctuated by French pop tunes, Alain Resnais' sprightly musical Same Old Song revolves around two stunning sisters and four men variously attracted to and repulsed by them. The characters don't actually sing whole songs, but lip-synch - a la Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven - fragments of chansons by artists such as Josephine Baker, Johnny Hallyday, Edith Piaf and Charles Aznavour. What the interior monologue was to Eugene O'Neill, the interior musical interlude is to the characters here: an expression of their most inexpressible, irrepressible and intimate feelings.

There will be no RiverBlues at Penn's Landing next year. The two-day festival, which for eight years has attracted blues players from Buddy Guy to Robert Cray, is off the Penn's Landing schedule in 1996. And don't look for Jambalaya Jam, RiverBlues' sister event, either. The Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau said yesterday it would merge the two events into an "American music" festival Memorial Day weekend, May 24 to 27. The four-night, three-day celebration, called Jam on the River, will begin with a Friday blues session.

Memorial Day at Penn's Landing can only mean one blessed thing: The Jambalaya Jam is set to bring a weekend's worth of New Orleans music, food and bon temps to the banks of the Delaware River. This year is the Jam's 10th, and the USAir-sponsored event promises to deliver as many piquant pleasures as ever. The prospect of Big Easy rhythms, po' boys and alligator sausage on a stick is too much to resist: each year the Jam is the most popular of the waterfront festivals, and it drew 50,000 revelers in 1994.

Billie Holiday once said she never sang the blues the same way twice. The people who run the RiverBlues Festival, and the performers who play it, think along similar lines. For eight years now, they've been looking to enrich the riverside celebration of the music that runs through America like tributaries flowing to the Mississippi. A glance at the RiverBlues schedule - noon to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday - suggests that they have succeeded: The assortment of artists traverses the spectrum of pre-blues (gospel)

Red beans and rice and jambalaya and funny masks. It must be Mardi Gras. Red beans and rice and jambalaya and funny masks and a string band - at 6 o'clock in the morning. It must be Mardi Gras in Philadelphia. Mardi Gras, the day before Lent begins and the festival that made New Orleans famous, will turn Philly silly tomorrow. By far, the locus of the local festivities is South Street. The perfectly named Fat Tuesday (431 South St.; 215-629-5999) will start its party before dawn with performances by the Trilby String Band (6 to 10 a.m.)

Beignets and the blues. Zapp's crawtaters and zydeco. The Neville Brothers, Randy Newman, Dr. John . . . It adds up to the world's largest orgy of New Orleans music and food outside of Louisiana, and it begins Saturday with all the tongue-burning, belly-churning, hip-twisting that has made it Philadelphia's official start of summer. Last year, 40,000 people sizzled at the Jambalaya Jam's three-day gig at the terraced waterfront park at Penn's Landing, and that included a rainy Monday.

The blues come early this year. For its seventh year on the Delaware, RiverBlues - the two-day music (and more) festival that in the past took place in late July - has been repositioned as a springtime partner for Memorial Day weekend's nine-year veteran, the Jambalaya Jam. The steady-rollin', down-home good timin' takes over the Great Plaza at Penn's Landing at noon on Saturday and won't leave go until 10 p.m. Sunday. The lineup this year doesn't feature any performers quite so incandescent as the Rev. Al Green, the top draw last year, and the new faces in town are minimal.