Last weekend some of the other Indians wives and I went to dinner to celebrate a birthday and had so much fun we decided to have dinner together more often and rotate cooks. One of the other wives and I were hanging out a few days ago and were checking out the menu from a Spanish restaurant nearby her apartment and drooled over the prospect of having paella. Naturally we scheduled our first dinner and put paella on the menu! Tonight was the night so we went to the West Side Market this aftenoon for some fresh chicken, shrimp and veggies and went home to cook. The paella was delicious and none remained after dinner so I've decided the recipe is post worthy. It served 6 ladies.
INGREDIENTS:
7 chicken thighs - bone in and skin on
1/3 pound cooked shrimp - medium sized
1 1/2 cups saffron rice
2 cups Swanson less sodium chicken stock
1/2 can of diced tomatoes-no salt added (14.5oz can)
1/2 cup frozen peas (optional)
1/2 sweet onion chopped
1/2 red onion chopped
1/2 small red pepper
1/2 small orange pepper
1/2 small green pepper
8 garlic cloves minced
1 lemon
Vegetable oil (or olive oil for taste)
DIRECTIONS:
-Heat approx 2 tbsp oil large skillet over medium-high heat to get the skilled hot
-Add chicken skin side down and brown 4 minutes
-Flip chicken and brown 2 minutes on the bottom side
-Add onions and garlic to the skillet and cook 3 more minutes
-Add rice to the skillet and stir to get rice coated with oil and juices
-Let the rice brown a little (stir as necessary)
-Add the diced tomatoes and a good amount of liquid from the can
-Allow to cook for a minute or two and do not stir often
-Add chicken stock
-Turn heat to medium-low and simmer covered (add salt if desired now or add later)
-In the meantime, heat 1 1/2 tbsp oil in a pan over medium-low heat to saute the peppers
-Saute the peppers until cooked but firm
-Check on the paella after 15 minutes or so to make sure there's enough liquid to cook the rice (if not, add more chicken stock)
-When the rice is almost finished, stir in the cooked shrimp, frozen peas and sauted peppers and re-cover until the rice is finsihed-approx 5 minutes (if the rice is already finished, then remove the skillet from the heat and let the paella flavors mix and cook by the steam from within)
-Leave covered until ready to serve and before serving, squeeze half the lemon over the paella
-Place a few lemon wedges or slices over the paella and serve!
*Note: Will likely need salting-I added some salt when I cooked the rice but it needed more when served-do not oversalt while cooking. We salted as necessary ourselves when eating.
