Chicken, Chorizo and Pork Belly Paella

Paella is a Spanish rice dish that I have always loved for the juicy prawns and other exotic seafood you will find in the paella of fancy cookbooks and Spanish restaurants hitting the tourist market. These paellas are delicious but recreating them at home can be expensive after buying an array of different seafood and fish. But digging a little deeper into the history of Valencian paella, I have found that the basis of this original dish was in fact chicken and rabbit, much cheaper meats! I have taken the concepts of this original paella along with the typical flavourings, saffron and paprika, to create my own, good value-for-money, all meat paella.

Ingredients to serve 4-6

100g good quality chorizo finely chopped | 500g Boneless Chicken Thighs each quartered | 4 thin boneless belly slices (approx 500g) chopped into bitesize pieces | 400g Bomba Paella Rice | 2 large pinches saffron | 1 heaped teaspoon smoked paprika | 2 litres chicken stock | 4 cloves garlic finely chopped | 1 chopped onion | 2 large handfuls of frozen peas | Handful chopped parsley | 1 lemon | Olive oil | Salt and pepper |

NB: I wanted to add chorizo for another slice of Spanish flavour and love the texture of the chorizo we sell in the shop, you can see it's made of good pork and has not been over processed!

Heat the oven to 190C | Heat the stock and saffron in a pan | Poach the chicken and belly pork pieces in boiling water for 15 minutes | Drain and leave to one side | Place the belly pork pieces on a baking tray and place in the oven for 10 minutes to crisp up the outside skin | Meanwhile heat a tbsp olive oil in a large, shallow pan | Fry the chorizo, onion and garlic till soft on a medium heat | Add half the infused stock, rice and paprika | Cook for 15 minutes stirring occasionally |

After 15 minutes add the chicken pieces, and gradually add the rest of the stock as the rice absorbs it | After another 10 add the belly pork and frozen peas | Cook for a final 5 minutes or until the dish looks done! | Season, take off the heat, and leave for 5 minutes while you prepare some bread and/or salad as accompaniment | Serve, with a sliced lemon and parsley for garnish, at the table rustic-style allowing everyone to help themselves.

Blueberry Sponge

This week's recipe is completely off subject, but due to request, I had to include this delicious blueberry sponge that I have made for the boys in the shop when they are working hard on a Saturday. It is again a recipe taken and adapted from Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Italy, one of my favourite cookbooks that I absolutely love, as much for its pictures and stories of Italian life as for its tasty recipes.

Ingredients 
butter for preparing the cake tin
4 large eggs (all of Andrew's eggs are free range from the local Gate Farm, Suffolk)
270g soft golden caster sugar
180g unsalted butter, melted
115ml extra virgin olive oil
155ml milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
400g plain flour
1.5 teaspoons of baking powder
a pinch of sea salt
zest of 1 lemon grated
zest of 1 orange grated
one large punnet of fresh blueberries (jamie uses 600g but I have found that 350g is plenty)


Preheat the oven to 175C | Generously butter a 25cm/9.5 inch cake tin, line the base with greaseproof paper, and set aside | Either by hand or in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk, beat the eggs and sugar for about 10 minutes until thick and pale yellow | Add the butter, extra virgin olive oil, milk and vanilla seeds, and mix well | Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt | Add the lemon and orange zest and stir with a wooden spoon until thoroughly blended | Set aside for 10 minutes to allow the flour to absorb the liquid.

Stir about a quarter of your blueberries or grapes into the batter, spoon it into your prepared cake tin and smooth out the top with a spatula | Place the cake tin in the centre of your preheated over and bake for 15 minutes, the remove it from the oven and scatter the remaining blueberries over the top | Gently push them down into the cake, then return it to the oven for another 30 to 40 minutes until the top is a deep golden brown and the cake feels quite firm | Put the tin on a rack to cool | After ten minutes run a knife along the sides of the pan and turn out your cake.

Deli Favourites- Fun Tips and Ideas

From talking to customers in the shop over the last few weeks, it seems that everyone's appetite is disappearing with the hot weather, and I couldn't agree more. I myself have been snacking and lunching on different cheeses, olives and cold meats from our lovely delicatessen, so I thought this week I would show you how I've been putting them to use to eat more lightly in the hotter weather.

1. Parma Ham and Melon has long been a favourite on Spanish tapas menus and is deliciously refreshing in the hot weather. My mum made these gorgeous little bundles as nibbles for a BBQ we had the other weekend. Simply cut melon into small sections, and add a folded piece of Andrew's Parma Ham, sliced thinly on request, attaching to the melon with a cocktail stick.

2. As well as our excellent Italian Buffalo Di Mozzarella that we sell as a whole ball in a pot, we also sell the same cheese in little individual balls in a pot. This makes it really easy to tear into salads for lunches. Serve here as I did with a plate of tomato spaghetti for a quick yummy lunch on a hot day.

3. I absolutely adore this Finnochiona salami which has to be my favourite of all the salamis that we sell in the shop. Finnochio translates as fennel in Italian, and the small pieces of fennel running through the salami give it a delicate but very unique taste. What I love about the salamis we serve in the shop, apart from their taste, is that we slice on request so customers can have as much or as little as they like and as thick or thin as they like it. A friend made me a lunch of a couple of slices of the Finnochiona salami with a light salad the other day and it was simply delicious!

4. We have now started selling small pitted black olives, thankfully, as it means I no longer have to fiddle about taking the stone out each time I want to cook with them. For easy potatoes with a summer feel, I slice roasting potatoes and add them to a roasting dish with thyme, olive oil and sliced black olives. Roast for 45 mins in a hot oven until golden, stirring occasionally. The olives give the potatoes a delightful flavour even if you want to discard them afterwards. This potato dish is also lovely if you add our Bridge Farm lamb cutlets 10 mins before the end of cooking, as the meat juices enrich the flavour of the potatoes even more.