Spanish Paella

Serve in a deep plate and sprinkle with chopped parsley. Serve a few lemon quarters with this dish.

Bring to boil on the top of the stove and finish in the oven. Cook until the rice is tender. Then everything should be cooked.

Add water or fish or chicken stock. I use water two to one. With all these wonderful ingredient you have a stock in the making. Add the peas and bay leaf.

When this is heated through but not cooked entirely, add the rice and cook for a couple of minutes until the rice is covered by the olive oil. Then add the Garlic and the saffron if you have it. If not then a little yellow food coloring will do. Allow the flavors to combine. Then add the shrimp.

Add the chorizo and the chicken and cook slowly.

Heat a little olive oil and a flat pan or a paella dish if you have one. Add the peppers and onions and cook slowly to bring out the flavors. Add some fresh tomatoes or a couple of hight quality canned tomatoes. I use ore and more canned because the liquid content is always good and the are always nice and red

These are the basic ingredients you will need for Paella. This will be paella of chicken, chorizo and shrimp. These are not the true ingredients for paella but it is safe to say that you will never get them all together unless you like in a big city. Normaly there would be mussels, squid and clams here and the chicken would be complimented with rabbit. These ingredients will give you a tasty paella while remaining more or less true to the original dish. This is one of my favorite rice dishes. Clockwise from the top: Saffron, shrimp, chorizo, peppers, chopped onion, chicken breast, Arborio rice, tomato and frozen peas.

Ingredients
3 cups Arborio rice
8 cups chicken stock or water
1 large onion diced
3 Garlic cloves minced
1 large green and red bell pepper diced
I cup of frozen peas
4 tomatoes, diced
15 large prawns or shrimp (feel free to add clams, calamari, prawns or mussels)
4 links chorizo sausages sliced into 1 inch pieces
1/2 cup Parsley chopped
1 pinch saffron
Salt and pepper.

Notes: You will see that I play down the saffron in this recipe. That is because the average person does not know how to work with saffron or can't afford to shell out money on something that will be used only once in a while.

If you have it then add it when you add the liquid. If you don't have it but want the same effect then add a little yellow food coloring.

Safron makes a big difference to the taste but maybe only to the educated palate. The dish is great without it too.

This is a great dish but be careful not to overcook it.