Daring Cooks - Paella

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Our Daring Cooks’ September 2012 hostess was Inma of la Galletika. Inma brought us a taste of Spain and challenged us to make our very own delicious Paella!

When you have real Spaniards around, it takes some guts to make a Spanish dish like paella, because you expose yourself to being compared to the real thing, la paella casera, and most of the time, you don't come out a winner of this battle.

Triple Choc Rice Pudding

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Rice pudding is one of the easiest sweets around : very few ingredients and no effort preparation for a very sweet and traditional dessert.  I wanted to jazz up my usual recipe by adding chocolate to it and although I am still slightly startled when I look at the finished result (because my rice pudding have always been whitish up to now), it has defininetely a great taste.

Jambalaya

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A dish I make on a regular basis and which is always highly appreciated by those who get to taste it : straight out of the Creole cuisine,  Jambalaya.

Undoubtedly there are as many versions of Jambalaya as there are cooks in Louisiana and beyond. But this is the version I usually made, coincidentally also a rather skinny version of the dish.

Ingredients for 4 servings:

* 160g lean breakfast bacon (can be replaced by chicken as well)
* 1 red onion
* 2 garlic cloves
* 250g mushrooms
* 1 sweet ramiro pepper
* 1 tsp olive oil
* 125g brown rice (uncooked)

* 400g sifted tomatoes

* 150ml vegetable stock

* 400g gambas (pre cooked)

* 1 Tbsp parsley
* a pinch of sugar
* to taste : salt, pepper, thyme (and if you like spicy, you can add tabasco sauce as well)

Dice the bacon, the onion, the garlic cloves, the mushrooms and the bell pepper.

Bake the bacon in the teaspoon of olive oil, add the vegetables and stew.

Add the uncooked rice, tomatoes and vegetable stock.  Season with salt, pepper, a pinch of sugar (and tabasco if you want) and cook for 15 minutes.

Add the gambas and heat for an additional 5 minutes, finish with the tablespoon of parsley (and thyme).