Book 17 : Picnic Hamper - Jane Price

I'm slightly obsessive (just in case the number of cookbooks didn't tip you off!), so last year when Matt and the kids brought me a apple tree for mothers day I got slightly (read massively) over excited and went a bit tree nuts. Before you could say nice tree, I had 6 apples, 3 pears, 3 olives, 2 plums, 2 figs and 8 other various fruit trees, not including the 3 citrus trees. I'm pretty sure the only thing that slowed me down was the end of bare rooted season (always makes me laugh) and that Matt point blank refused to dig anymore holes until we had a house to go with the trees. The problem with me having a brief fruit tree obsession (there was also a short vegie garden bit) was that everyone assumes I like gardening, I don't! Because I don't like gardening you can almost set your watch to when things will start to die. Strangely my fruit trees seem to be holding up, mainly because its survival of the fittest, if any die I'll leave them there to show the others what will happen if they don't pull their weight. I know that makes no sense, but I planted (supervised) the damn things, my work here is done. Unfortunately my Mum, Grandmother, Sister and Mother-in-law,seem to think that having fruit trees also means I'll do other gardening. They keep asking me when I'll be putting in garden beds and plants etc. I assumed really tall weeds could be feature plants? Mum keeps dropping hints about weeding, I assumed that's what Round-up is for? I can honestly say I would rather staple my eyelids to my forehead than garden. Usually when we have a gardening day I make up some kind of excuse to go inside (glass of water?) and accidentally start making Cinnamon buns. Hopefully I'll come home one day and my front lawn will have a few garden beds, selectively planted with plants that required no maintenance at all (hint, hint Mum/Shirl)..... I spose I can dream.

I've stopped trying to tie my intros into the book I've been cooking from, so from now on sit back and enjoy some random, confused, waffling without trying to work out how it applies to Paella (or what ever else I'm cooking). Cos as usual I have no idea either :)

Recipe - Chicken and Chorizo Paella

60ml Olive Oil
1 large Red Capsicum, 5mm cut into strips
600g boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 3cm cubes
200g mushrooms, thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tbls grated lemon zest
700g ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
200g green beans, trimmed and cut into 3cm lengths
1tbls chopped rosemary
2 tbls chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/4 tsp saffron threads dissolved in 60ml hot water
440g short-grain white rice
750ml hot chicken stock
6 lemon wedges, to serve

Heat the olive oil in a paella pan or in a large, heavy-based, deep frying pan over medium heat. Add the red capsicum strips and cook, stirring for about 6 minutes, or until softened, then remove from the pan.
  Add the chicken to the pan and cook for 10 minutes, or until browned.  Remove from the pan.  Add the chorizo to the pan and cook for 5 minutes, or until golden.  Remove from the pan.  Add the mushrooms, garlic and lemon zest to the pan, and cook over medium for 5 minutes.
  Stir in the tomatoes and capsicum, and cook for a further 5 minutes, or until the tomato is soft.
Add the beans, rosemary, parsley, saffron mixture, rice, chicken and chorizo.  Stir briefly and add the stock.  Do not stir at this point.  Reduce the heat ad simmer for 30 minutes.  Remove from the heat, cover and leave to stand for 10 minutes.  Serve with lemon wedges.

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I brought this book when we were planning a trip to the zoo and it was an excuse to get another book (very poor excuse).  Not really sure taking a full dinner set and cutlery to the zoo is overly practical, but there are some nice recipes in here.  There are stacks of little finger foods, rolls, quiches etc along with a huge range of salads.  It also has some more impractical items like the above Paella and seafood's that I wouldn't want sitting in a picnic basket while I farted around looking at the gorillas.   On the other hand it has a really good desert section (always a winner for me) with a Apple Custard Slice that looks awesome.  Although its not a ground breaking book, it is fairly good with a wide range of picnicy recipes.

Be warned the recipe takes a while to cook, its messy (if you're me) and has a stack of steps, so its easy to forget something.  Luckily I didn't this time, but I did have issues with my paella pan, I picked mine up for $5.99 at Aldi, sadly it doesn't conduct heat very well so took ages to get going.  The paella itself seems fairly bland, although that might of been my annoyance with how long it took to cook, I'm sure there are better recipes around.  Next time I think I'd make the custard slice... mmm

Thanks
Kate
xx

Ps:  Did you notice how I pretended that all my previous intros had something to do with the books :)