Roy Morris' Paella

Roy's Paella is very famous in the Morris household. He is an expert at making his delicious traditional Spanish Paellas packed with yummy and healthy ingredients and has been making them for parties and dinner events for as long as I can remember.

So important is the Morris Paella tradition that when my parents had their kitchen done they had a special cooker fitted with a massive middle ring to accomodate a traditional Spanish Paella dish, allowing the heat to be evenly distributed for perfectly cooked Paella.

Roy is very particular about how his Paella is made, and has several little tips for success - such as chopping up and preparing all the ingredients before starting any of the cooking. Roy actually lost all respect for Gordon Ramsay one day when he saw him on the telly stirring his Paella after the rice had been added - a huge no-no in Roy's book!

While we were in Vienna celebrating Christmas, we were lucky enough to have a lovely Paella night organised by Roy in which he made not one, not two but THREE different Paellas.

I tried the seafood and the veggie ones and they were both very lovely. The main Paella was a chicken, seafood and chorizo one that everyone said was amazing. Very kindly, Roy agreed to give us the recipe and show us how his famous Paella is made for us to share with our readers. Thanks Roy!

Recipe (serves 8):
1 spicy chorizo
500g chicken breast
5 cloves garlic
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1 tin chopped tomatoes
8 mushrooms
1 packet frozen seafood
1 and a half cups of rice
3 cups of vegetable stock
2 tsp colorante (or tumeric)
2 handfuls frozen peas
3 lemons
Olive oil

Start by preparing all the ingredients. Defrost the seafood. Chop the chorizo into bitesize chunks. Cut 24 strips from the pepper - 12 of the red, 12 of the green and put aside for decoration. Chop up the rest. Finely chop the garlic and slice the mushrooms. Give the chicken a quick frying in a frying pan - enough to enable you to break the chicken up into chunks, and put to one side.

Take the paella pan, place over the heat, add a glug of olive oil and fry the garlic, chopped peppers and chorizo for 5 minutes while stirring regularly. Add the chicken and fry for a further 5 minutes.

Add the mushrooms and fry for another five minutes. Add the tin of tomatoes, seafood, peas, stock and colorante and bring to the boil.

Once the liquid is at a rolling boil, sprinkle in the rice evenly. Move the rice around with a spatula to ensure an even spread, but after this point the rice MUST NOT be stirred again - cook's note - "in spite of what that philistine Gordon Ramsay demonstrates on television!"

Neatly place the pepper strips on their sides in concentric circles around the paella to decorate.

Cook the paella at a medium heat until the rice is evenly soft all over - it may be necessary to add more water.

During this final stage, it is important to ensure however inappropriate your heat source may be, that all the rice receives an equal amount of heat. This entails moving the pan around and ensuring everywhere gets evenly. Decorate the top of the paella with wedges of lemon, cover with a clean cloth and leave to rest for 10 minutes. Serve to your impressed guests!