Quorn Paella

19/70


And so back to the Quorn Cookbook experiment for 2011....


I decided to cook the Paella for our saturday night tea as I had everything in I needed and it looked like the kind of recipe that should not be rushed (cooking time in the book says 40 mins but I always find with prep and everything else it tends to take longer).


There are a lot of ingredients in this recipe and so I tried to be organised and have everything prepped and chopped and to hand before I started, this proved to be a clever thing to do and made the actual cooking time pretty much bang on the 40 minutes stated. Also, I did the prep while I cooked off the sausages - in the recipe it says to fry them in 1tbsp of oil but to save on fat (and WW points) I simply cooked them dry in the oven for 20 minutes (I had defrosted them first) and they were fine, this 20 minute slot was when I prepped everything ready to go.


So, this is my paella at the second stage of cooking as I am about to add the spices:

It does not look much like paella here as the rice has not yet been added but all the beans and veggies are in at this point and the spices about to go in are saffron, turmeric, chilli powder, smoked paprika and lemon zest.

I used easy cook rice instead of the standard long grain stated in the recipe and I also used tinned tomatoes instead of fresh because again it was what I had in. It worked perfectly well with these amendments though and this is what the finished product looked like when served.

We really enjoyed the finished product and I thought it was incredibly tasty. The fresh lemon juice and zest really cuts through and makes the dish fragrant and light but the heat from the spices balances this out. It is one of those dishes where each mouthful explodes with flavour in your mouth - very tasty and enjoyable and also incredibly satisfying. The recipe makes 4 very generous portions which is nice, especially given how low fat this dish is (omitting 1tbsp of oil as I did).

In terms of weight watchers pro-points, this recipe contains 12 points per portion which is made up as follows: sausages (2), oil (1), rice (7), peas (1), stock (1). This is pretty good really for such a substantial and filling meal and it is one which I will definitely be making again as part of my healthy eating plan - especially because it is so packed with flavour and we enjoyed it so much, to be honest it felt like it should have been more points than this and really that sums up what a great recipe should be!

We gave it an 8/10 and to date it is one of my favourites from the Quorn cookbook. I would happily serve this to friends and family, veggie and non-veggie alike.