Lemony Prawn & Chorizo Rice - a fab quick one pot supper

Just before Christmas I took out a subscription (very nearly put "prescription" - totally different thing!) with the BBC's Good Food Magazine.

Now I know that the majority of the recipes that appear in the magazine also appear online, but I just enjoy having the pictures right there - up close and in front of me - when I am sitting in the living room and there's something dull on the t.v. (or there's nothing on the t.v. - which is more like it, these days!).  No, I'm afraid I don't possess a laptop - it's a desktop or nothing, for me.  Comes of being a very swift touch typist - I really hate the restriction of a laptop's keyboard.  Either that or I'm just plain old fashioned - which could easily be it, I'll admit.

Anyway, back to the magazine.  To save having great teetering piles of magazines lurking around the flat, I've taken to cutting out the recipes that attract my attention and keeping them in a concertina file.  I'll then consult the file when I'm putting together the week's menu's - and a very good system it has proven to be.

All of which was a fairly long-winded way of saying that this recipe originated in the BBC Good Food magazine for February!

Hubby loves chorizo, all of us love prawns and son & heir particularly enjoys one pot, no side dishes, type meals.  Add to those good points the extra positive point that it is relatively low in fat, which is something I'm very keen on, these days and you've got a winner of a dish.

Mmmn, yummy! Who'd have thought it'd be good for you?

I tweaked the original recipe a little, adding twice the amount of chorizo (which apparently still wasn't enough - hubby could have had lots more!) and using vegetable stock instead of just water for the rice.  I also used cooked peeled prawns instead of raw, basically because they're easier to get hold of and cheaper.

I also tweaked it slightly in retrospect, as both chaps found the lemon to be too dominant.  Now I like lemon in this context, but it must be a girl thing, as neither of the chaps do.  Hence, if your family like lemon then add the zest as well as the juice and maybe increase it back to the one lemon in the original recipe.

I found the dish to be lovely and light, with plenty of interest from the mix of chorizo and prawn.  It also contains turmeric - and any dish that does that, is immediately in my good books.  Son & heir completely cleared his plate, which was something of a surprise as I'd expected to at least find strips of red pepper left.  From that, I'd say that you could class this dish as being "teenager friendly", if nothing else!

Edited to say : time has moved on and it's now 10 April 2013.  I've just made this recipe (see photo above) and swapped out the vegetable stock for the beautiful Essential Cuisine fish stock.  I also added two chestnut mushrooms, sliced.  The end result was really, really good and I recommend it to you. 

LEMONY PRAWN & CHORIZO RICE    (feeds 3)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, sliced

2 small red peppers, deseeded and sliced

100g chorizo, thinly sliced

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 red chilli, chopped & deseeded if you don’t like it too hot

½ tsp turmeric

250g long grain rice (I used Basmati)

500ml boiling low salt vegetable or fish stock (I use Essential Cuisine stock)

200g cooked peeled prawns, defrosted if frozen

100g frozen peas

juice of ½ lemon.

Method :

1.  Heat the oil in a shallow pan (or frying pan) with a lid.  Add the onion, peppers, chorizo, garlic and chilli and fry over a high heat for 3 minutes.

2.  Reduce the heat to medium, and add the turmeric and rice, stirring to ensure the rice is coated in the cooking juices.

3.  Pour in the stock, stir then cover and cook for 12 minutes or until the rice is nicely al dente.

4.  Uncover and stir in the prawns and peas.  Add a splash more water if the mix is looking a little dry and cook for as long as it takes for the peas to defrost and cook and the prawns to be heated through – around 2 minutes or so.

5.  The rice should now be tender, so stir in the lemon juice and serve.

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