Poor Cook's Paella

Paella is one of my favorite things to make and eat. It has everything that I would ever want in a dish; tons of seafood, chicken, and sausage. The last time I made paella I made it with my father on Mother’s Day. It came out really great with a ton of flavor and ingredients. Now that the weather is getting nicer, I was craving a nice summer meal so I decided to make some bruschetta and paella. Since I have 3 part time jobs, it is not really in my budget to buy lobsters and all the wonderful seafood that traditionally goes into making paella. I decided to cut it down and just do shrimp and sausage paella. It came out really tasty and was pretty simple to make. It may look like a lot of ingredients but most of them are spices.

Paella

1 box of rice pilaf

3 Sausages (I mixed a few different kinds)

20 Shrimp

½ yellow onion

2 cloves of garlic

olive oil

1-1 ½ cups of frozen peas (depends on how much you like peas)

¼ cup homemade tomato sauce (jar is also fine)

pinch of saffron

Spices

-chili powder

-cayenne pepper

-paprika

-cumin

-pinch of curry powder

-salt

-pepper

I decided that it would be nice to grill the sausage and shrimp to add a smoky flavor to the dish. So I threw the sausages on the grill while I put the pot of rice pilaf on the stove.

While they cooked, I chopped the onion and garlic, then seasoned the shrimp. I used all of the spices that are listed above and just sprinkled them over both sides of the shrimp.

When the sausages were almost done, I grilled the shrimp briefly on both sides. I didn’t want to cook them all the way through, because I knew I would be adding them to the pot and they would continue to cook.

I then used a heavy pot to sauté the onions and garlic in olive oil. Once the onions were translucent, I added the rice, tomato sauce, pinch of saffron, cut-up sausage, and shrimp to the pot and covered it for 5-10 minutes. I then added the frozen peas and covered for another 5 minutes. I was not sure how much flavor I was going to be able to incorporate without all the ingredients of traditional paella, but it came out delicious. This served 3 and the leftovers were quite good cold the next day for lunch!

Bruschetta

1 French baguette sliced thin

3 chopped tomatoes

1 garlic clove finely chopped

½ shallot finely chopped

6 basil leaves chopped

1 tsp. balsamic vinegar

2 tsp. Olive Oil

sprinkle of salt

4 grinds of pepper

Mix together all of the ingredients and spoon onto fresh bread. If fresh bread is not available toasting it is a good alternative.

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