Notes
I feel very nervous about using the word paella here. My Spanish friends tell me that a meat paella would usually be made with rabbit, and that traditionally there is absolutely no place for chorizo, so technically this is a Spanish-inspired chicken and chorizo rice dish, or at the very best a bastardised paella! Technicalities aside, this is a delicious and straight forward midweek meal, which also feels like a treat at the weekend. It reheats well, and feel free to miss out any veg or meat you're not keen on, or equally chuck in anything you need to use up!
Ingredients
olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 carrot, diced
2 cloves garlic, or a big squeeze/heaped tsp. garlic paste (something I always have in the fridge for ease)
small handful of flatleaf parsley, stalks finely diced and leaves finely chopped separately and put to one side
1 tsp. smoked paprika
half a chorizo ring (around 100g), diced - ideally you need the whole sausage version here, as opposed to the pre-sliced stuff you can buy
4 chicken thigh fillets, cut into bite sized pieces (I often just do this with scissors as I add the chicken to the pan)
1 pepper, diced (red is nice here for sweetness and colour, but yellow, orange or green would work just as well)
1 tbsp./a generous squeeze of tomato puree
300g paella/Bomba rice
750ml chicken stock (fresh is always lovely, but equally can be made up with a stock cube or liquid stock concentrate - whatever you fancy here is fine)
A generous handful of frozen peas
A tub of chargrilled artichokes hearts in oil (around 150g), chopped into bitesize pieces
Salt & pepper
1 lemon or lemon juice
Method
Add a glug of olive oil to a large frying pan or wide casserole dish and warm over a medium heat.
Add the onion and carrot, along with a pinch of salt (this both helps with the flavour but also teases the liquid out of the onions). Once starting to soften and the onion becomes translucent, and the garlic, chorizo, parsley stalks and smoked paprika and cook for five minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the chicken and cook for a further five minutes until the chicken is starting to brown, and then add the pepper and cook for a few minutes until it is starting to soften.
Add the tomato puree, and mix through before adding the rice. Give the dish a REALLY good stir, ensuring the rice is covered with lovely chorizo oil, and has spread out evenly through the pan.
Pour in your chicken stock, mix everything together and bring to the boil, before reducing the heat to a gentle simmer.
Cook for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to ensure you rice doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.
Add the peas and artichokes, and cook for a further five minutes so they warm through. If the liquid has evaporated but your rice still tastes a little chalky, add a splash of water.
After five minutes has passed, taste your rice and check it is cooked to perfection - a little bite is OK, but chalkiness is not. Check for seasoning too. Depending on how salty your stock was, it may need a little more salt. A lovely grind of pepper is great too.
Serve in bowls, sprinkling your chopped parsley leaves all over, and with a wedge of lemon on the side. If you don't have fresh lemons, you can add a bit of lemon juice when seasoning, just to give it a bit of zing.
Bon appétit!