Chicken and Vegetable Paella

Ingredients

4 tablespoons olive oil
3 chicken breasts, diced and seasoned with salt
1 onion, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium zucchini, sliced into semi-circles
1 italian green pepper, diced
3-4 small tomatoes, peeled and diced
1 red pepper, cut into strips
8 asparagus spears
1 lemon, juiced
1 lemon, quartered for each plate
8 cups chicken stock, heated
3 cups short-grain white rice (such as an arborio or risotto-type)
saffron
Salt

Preparation

Heat the olive oil in a paella pan. Add the chicken pieces and sauté until they are brown. Remove from pan and set aside.

Add the onion, garlic, zucchini and Italian green pepper. After five minutes, add the chopped tomatoes and crushed saffron, mixing well.

Then add the rice, mix well with the other ingredients and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the chicken back to the pan.

Now add the heated stock (you might not need to use it all at once), bring it back to the boil in the paella pan and immediately add the juice of the lemon. Check for salt.

Flatten the mixture and alternate the red pepper strips and asparagus spears on top. Push them down slightly into the rice mixture.

Cook on high heat for ten minutes, and then on low heat for another seven or eight. If you did not use all the stock, keep checking during the cooking and add more as needed.

When the rice is soft, remove from the heat and leave to sit for five minutes so that the rice absorbs all the stock before serving straight from the pan.