March 27: National Spanish Paella Day

What is paella? How do you even pronounce it?

Well, I still can't figure out how to pronounce it. It is a Spanish dish that is kind of a mish-mash of whatever you have on hand. You are supposed to use Paella rice, sometimes called Bomba or Valencia rice. I used brown rice. An important ingredient is saffron or saffron threads. My local grocery store didn't have that so I didn't use it. So I'm not sure that I actually made Paella, but I did get adventurous and used a lot of paprika and ended up with a really good meal. And a lot of it! This is probably enough food for one person for two days, if you ate it at every meal. Good thing I like left overs!

JazzyJ's Made Up Super Authentic (Not) Paella Recipe:

Ingredients:
- 1 large chicken breast
- 16 shrimp
- 3 small random sausages found in the freezer (they ended up being maple chicken sausages actually!) (you are supposed to use chorizo which I didn't have)
- 1 lemon (the juice from it)
- half a clove of garlic, squeezed through a garlic thingy
- 3 tablespoons garlic powder
- 2 tablespoons paprika
- pepper to taste
- 2 cups brown rice (less if you don't need to feed an army!)
- 3/4 cup shredded frozen onion you found in your freezer (or practically any 3/4 cup shredded or finely chopped onion)
- 1/2 cups peas
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 cup chicken broth (I thought I was using chicken broth until I realized it was actually vegetable broth)

You can pretty much add any vegetable. A lot of paella recipes called for tomatoes. I don't eat tomatoes so I nixed that quickly. A lot of people add mussels to their concoction also.

Marinating shrimp!

You are supposed to cook this in a paella pan. I don't have one of those so I cooked it in the biggest pan I have. Life is all about being creative and improvising. I've found, that most of the time, as long as you wing it, and have some confidence, people don't even realize you don't know what you are doing!

The random freezer sausage, chicken, and shrimp cooking.

Instructions:
1. Simmer the rice with the amount of water suggested on the packaging. Five minutes before the rice is down, add in 1 cup chicken (or vegetable broth) and cook. There will be some liquid left which is good.
2. Add the olive oil to your paella (or big pan) and cook the chicken in it. Add in 1 tablespoon paprika and 1 tablespoon garlic powder. Add in the shredded onions.
3. Marinate the shrimp in the remaining paprika and garlic powder, mixed with 1/2 juice from a lemon until the chicken is well cooked.
4. When the chicken is thoroughly cooked, add in the sausage (or chorizo) and the shrimp and cook until everything is well cooked. When the rice is done, add in the rice. Add pepper to taste. Add in peas and other vegetables. Cook until everything is hot and ready to eat!

Some interesting notes:
- I used Sweet Smoked Spanish Paprika that I had previously bought at a specialty spice store. I would highly recommend!
- My family has A LOT of frozen tomatoes in the freezer.
- Use caution while dancing in the kitchen: I did a back high kick move and kicked the bottom of the refrigerator which resulted in my toe bleeding.

And what is this? This is a picture of my counter taken while I was dancing.