Arroz con pollo "El Willo"

One or two carefully selected people have been privileged to share our 'arroz con pollo'! None of them have suffered food poisoning as a result and all have been gracious enough to pass complements about the quality.

So now we are sharing the recipe with you in the hope that you might share with us your recipes for a similar dish.

First off - the dish is actually called arroz not paella as many people would have it. Strictly speaking the paella is the pan in which you cook the arroz.

Now we have that misconception out of the way let's move on to the ingredients.

Ingredients

We like our arroz to be more meat than rice so we buy a large pack of chicken pieces to make sure that everyone gets plenty. The sort of pack we buy has thighs, drumsticks and other assorted parts of the bird; all on the bone because we believe they cook better and have more flavour than pieces of breast. Actually it is a damn sight cheaper as well.

Chorizo - we prefer the variety which is for cooking which remains soft rather than hard and chewy.

We also like to have vegetables in the dish, so we buy a jar of white butter beans, a large red pepper, fresh tomatoes, an onion, sometimes french green beans and of course several cloves of garlic.

The rice we use is the pre-cooked vapirozado variety.

The secret ingredient is a sachet of Paellerro which contains all the saffron and spices to give the dish its flavour.

You will notice that we haven't given any quantities. That is because we subscribe to the Jamie Oliver school of a handful of this and a pinch of that. The only thing we measure is the rice. For four people we use about 500 gms of rice with about twice the quantity of water by volume. We call this method - 'por un gran parte'.

Preparation

Cut the pepper into strips, the green beans into pieces, chop the onion, chop the garlic, cut the tomatoes into quarters and of course pour a glass of wine or open a can of cerveza.

We either cook on the gas BBQ by the kitchen or on the charcoal one on the roof.

Method

Heat up a good quantity of olive oil in the paella and add the chicken. Cook until golden brown. Add the onion, garlic and chorizo and continue to cook until the onion is soft.

Now add the water ( to save time we often use boiling water) and then the packet of Paellero and stir gently. The aim is to get the flavoured oil and the Paellero to mix with the water. Then add the rice and stir again.

Bring the water back to the boil and continue simmering for about ten minutes. Now add the tomatoes and the beans and lay the pepper strips across the top. Continue cooking without stirring until the rice has absorbed the water and is nice and soft.

Spaniards will cook arroz on an open gas ring. We prefer to use a BBQ with the lid down because then it cooks like an oven and you don't loose heat; saving fuel and reducing our carbon footprint!

We serve the arroz directly from the BBQ and leave the 'seconds' to keep warm.

A quarter of a 'limón' to squeeze over the arroz and some fresh 'pan' is all that is needed to accompany the dish.