Oven Baked Chicken Paella

This recipe is in the current edition of Super Food Ideas magazine.  Liss from Frills in the Hills recently blogged the same recipe.  I had been tempted to try it, and after seeing her blog, I decided to give it a go.  Me being me, in my usual style, did make a few modifications - the recipe I am giving you is my take on the recipe printed in the mag.

Oven Baked Chicken and Sausage Paella


Serves 4-6

1/2 tsp saffron threads
2 tbs boiling water
4 cups chicken stock *
2 tsp olive oil
3 sliced sausages **
1.2kg drumettes (this will give you approx 20 drumettes)
2 tbs paprika
2 onions, finely diced
3 cloves crushed garlic
2 cups arborio rice
1 cup frozen peas
chargrilled capsicum ***

Preheat oven to 180C.

Place saffron threads in a small heatproof bowl, cover with boiling water, and set aside until needed. (This will allow the flavours to develop).

Heat your stock until it is boiling.  Set aside (covered until needed).

Heat a large frypan over medium high heat.  Add the sausage slices, and cook on both sides until browned (2-3 minutes each side).  Transfer to a plate.  Add the chicken drumettes to the pan, sprinkle with half the paprika, and cook for approximately 5 minutes, or until browned on all sides.  Remove from pan, and place with cooked sausage.

At this point I wiped out the frypan with paper towels to remove the excess oil.

Add the olive oil, and then add the onions and garlic, cook stirring for 3 minutes, or until softened.  Add the rice, remaining paprika and saffron mixture.  Cook, stirring for 1 minute, to coat the rice.  Transfer the rice mixture to a large roasting/casserole dish.

Pour the stock over the rice, stir to combine.  Add the chicken drumettes and sausage to the dish, make sure to push the chicken down in to the stock mixture.  Pour over the peas, and chargrilled capsicum.

Cover the pan tightly with several layers of foil.  Bake in the oven for 50 minutes.  Remove from the oven and let sit for a further 10 minutes, just to let the steam finish the cooking process.

Now you may like to top this with chopped tomatoes, and parsley - but I thought it was fine as it was.

* For the chicken stock I used the concentrated stock that I made with the Thermomix - I used 3 tbs of stock concentrate added to 4 cups of boiling water.

** The recipe actually called for chorizo sausages, and I thought I had some in the freezer, but once I had thawed them out and cut into them I found that they were actually cheese kranskys.  Not to worry, these turned out probably better, as they were not as spicy for "The Darlings".  So use whatever kind of sausage you like I say!!

*** I had a bottle of chargrilled capsicum in the fridge left over from making pizzas - use as much or as little as you like of this!

All in all this was a very good, easy, family friendly dinner.  Of course those that know "the Darlings" well will already know that they had to arm themselves with a spare plate to remove any "green" objects (peas) to!!  I pray for the day to come when they will eat a vegetable without gagging!!!  I live in fear that their wives are going to berate me for the rest of my days because they are such fussy eaters!!  Lord knows I try - but they continue to remove, or gag!!!

Dear Readers do you know of any children that are as fussy as mine (please tell me a story even if you don't - just to make me feel better!)?