Recipe: Brown Rice Paella

A week before Valentine's Day last year, my husband and I were running errands as he randomly pulled us into a jewelry store. We poked around a bit until I found a ring I absolutely loved. But knowing that it was a little extravagant, I put it on my "someday" list and we went on our way. 

Flash forward to our Valentine's dinner. As we ate, Matt started talking about how excited he was to give me my gift. He gave hints like "it's shiny," "it's round," "I know you really wanted it.." I thought, of course, it had to be the ring! But the box he handed me was too large to hold something so small. Instead as I opened it up, I found a paella pan inside. Wah wah wah. Don't get me wrong, it really was a wonderful gift and even went along with all of the hints given. But after explaining my thought process, we now both have a little laugh each time I pull out the pan to make one of our favorite dishes: Paella.

Most recipes for Paella use a lot of seafood and long grain white rice. I use brown rice just to make it a little healthier and stick to chicken and chorizo sausage as our meat. I'll sometimes toss in a little shrimp just to make my husband happy. But this is a kitchen sink kind of recipe so feel free to substitute out ingredients or add more veggies to your liking.

Ingredients
1 lb. chorizo sausage
3 cups cooked chicken
1 medium onion chopped
3 bell peppers of different colors
1 tomato chopped
1 Tbsp minced garlic
4 cups cooked brown rice (I use a box of frozen from Trader Joe's)
2 tsp saffron
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp curry powder (optional)
1 can (2 cups) chicken stock

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Chop peppers in half. Julienne (cut strips from) one half of each color pepper and set aside. Chop the remaining three halves into small pieces. Cook chopped peppers, onion, garlic and chorizo in paella pan (or oven-safe pan) on medium-high heat on the stove. Once the sausage is cooked through, add saffron, cumin, curry powder and chicken stock. Mix together well. Add small pieces of chicken, tomato, and brown rice. Remove from heat. Arrange your pepper strips in a design on the top of your dish. Place in the oven for about 35-50 minutes depending on how crispy you like the edges of your rice. Enjoy!