This is a recipe for jambalaya – a Creole dish loosely resembling paella.
The quantities given below will make a huge meal for 2 people, or a small meal for 4 people, I made it as a huge meal for two people and had two lunch size portions left over – so I’ll leave it to you.

Ingredients

  • 2 chicken breasts – cubed
  • 2 Spanish/Italian sausages (chorizo or similar)
  • ~200g shrimp
  • 2 cups rice
  • one red bell pepper – diced
  • one onion – coarsely chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic – crushed

for the sauce:

  • 2 tsp. worcester sauce
  • 1 tsp. oregano, or 1/2 oregano 1/2 thyme if you’ve got it
  • 1/2 tsp. tabasco
  • 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
  • 2 tsp. salt
  • a generous amount of ground black pepper
  • 1 cup chicken broth
  • 2 cups water
  • 1 can of crushed tomatoes

Feel free to add other ingredients to the above list, improvising is fun!
One thing to note about the recipe though – the quantities of liquid are correct for the cooking time, beware of burning all the rice to the bottom of the pan… You’ll want to use a big pan too – or transfer to a cooking pot when you add the sauce ingredients.

Directions

Cut the chicken, pepper and onion up as above. It’s probably easier to cut the sausage up after you’ve cooked it.

  • Brown the chicken and set aside, leaving some oil in the pan
  • Heat the pan and crush the garlic in with a garlic press, or dice it up very finely – fry for 30 seconds then add the pepper and onion
  • Cook for 5 – 10 minutes, until the onion is tender
  • Add the rice and sauce ingredients and bring to the boil (yes, put the rice in the same pan as everything else)
  • Reduce heat and cover – simmer for 30 minutes

    • At the same time cook the sausage – when it’s ready slice it up and add to the mixture

  • When 30 minutes is up stir in the shrimp and cook for an extra 3-5 minutes, depending on what type you use – if it’s the small ones cook 3 minutes, or fresh, big ones cook 5 minutes

Done. Nice and easy huh? And not too much to wash up afterwards :)

Let me know how you get on!

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