Restaurant Highlight: Chicken and Chorizo Paella

Chicken and Chorizo Paella (adapted from a Jamie Oliver recipe)

This restaurant highlight is a little bit different, as this is our conservation issue, the restaurant is your own house! Eating out is a lovely luxury, but restaurants are known for adding to the food waste problem in this country. By making your own food at home, and adapting recipes depending on what you have in the fridge, you can reduce your food waste and save your money in the long run. As well as making a tasty and healthy dinner. This recipe is great because you can easily adapt it depending on what you have in the fridge - if you don’t have chorizo, breakfast sausages or even beef or lamb can work. Bacon is also great for adding a smoky flavour. I also like to throw in some prawns if I’m feeling really fancy, but you don’t have to. And if you have leftover chicken from a Sunday roast - use that instead of the chicken thighs. Feel free to add more fish if you don’t have any chicken, or as well as! Add more veggies - things like celery, mushrooms, and different colours of peppers, as well as fresh tomatoes make a great addition to this. Frozen or fresh spinach can be great too if you don’t have frozen peas. And if you want to make it veggie, use a vegetable stock cube and leave out the meat, or add something like tofu.

Ingredients

• 2-4 cloves of garlic depending on your taste (I always add more than the recipe says!)

• 1 onion, or a couple of shallots

• 1-2 carrots

• Flat leaf parsley, or dried parsley will work just as well

• 70g of chorizo

• 2 deboned chicken thighs

• 1 red pepper (green and yellow also work)

• 1 tsp paprika

• Tomato puree

• 1 chicken stock cube

• 300g rice (you should use paella rice, but it can be just as tasty with any type of rice you have in your cupboard)

• 100g frozen peas

• 200g frozen peeled cooked prawns (optional)

• Lemon juice

Method

Chop all the veggies - but keep them in separate piles, ready for use.

Chop the chorizo and chicken thighs.

Add all the garlic, onion, carrot, chicken and chorizo to a medium heat pan with some olive oil, plus the paprika and parsley. Fry for about 5 mins.

Add the pepper (or any soft veggies you’re using that need slightly less cooking) and continue to cook for another 5 mins.

Add the rice, tomato puree and crumble in the stock cube - stirring all the time.

Add 750ml of boiling water. Bring to the boil and then reduce the heat and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring regularly to make sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

Stir in the peas and the prawns (optional) and continue to cook for 5 minutes.

Add salt and pepper and a little squeeze of lemon juice, and serve.

By Grace Balfour-Harle