| Hi and welcome to my blog! I’m Tony O’Reilly (not of Heinz or rugby (unfortunately) but married some 30yrs, father of four great kids plus one dog, living by the sea in Balbriggan, Co Dublin.
I’ve devoted my life to food from an early age, I have always been interested in cooking and tastes. At fourteen, I started to cook my own ‘dinners’ and enjoyed making some strange concoctions and experimenting! Some tasted good and some….. well, not so good! The latter landed in the recycler - that’s the dog in our house!
I’m an inquisitive so and so and always ask questions like, ’ What if?’, ‘ What if I burn the onions’, ‘how does it alter the flavour of the meat’,’ how much should I burn them to get the flavour I desire?’,’ What if I put freshly sieved tomato and garlic over my grilled cod instead of a cooked sauce’ and so on. You may say that this has been happening for years but I was doing it way back in the 70s, 1971 to be precise!
After leaving school I headed for the local catering college and, after two years’ qualified as a ‘chef’. Wow, what did I know? Well very little besides the basic fundamentals, methods of cookery and how to distinguish a Portobello from a porcini! I therefore set out on my first of many culinary pilgrimages to travel the world and discover the ultimate eating experience. Now for some that eating experience might be finding the most expensive and rarest ingredient but that’s not for me, sure I have eaten gold leaf chocolates, the finest Beluga caviar and fresh white truffles on the side of a mountain in north Italy, but I enjoy peasant food, what the ‘man on the street’ eats, real food, simple, earthy and tasty. To this end I present you with this week’s culinary treat a mouth-watering paella. It also offers you an alternative use for the BBQ you kept in the shed this year!
Paella with Seafood,Chicken and Chorizo (4-6 people)
Ingredients
100g Chorizo, sliced into cubes
4 Chicken legs, cut in pieces
2 tbsp. Olive oil
1 Onion, chopped
1 Red & yellow peppers, deseeded and sliced
100g Mange tout trimmed and chopped
2large Tomatoes, grated
2 cups 200g paella/bomba rice
150g Tinned chopped tomatoes
1 litres (approx.) Water
4 Garlic cloves, crushed
1 tbsp. Paprika
pinch Saffron strands
Sall fist Fist full rosemary
25g Fresh coriander, picked and chopped
200g Seafood mix
200g Mussels, prepared
4-6 Lemon wedges, to serve (I forgot!!)
Method
Heat the oil in a paellera (Paella pan).
Gently fry the chicken then add the chorizo and fry for a further 8-10 minutes. Season with salt.
Add the fish and continue cooking for 2-3 minutes.
Add the vegetables and sauté until soft.
Add the rice and stir in well.
Add the garlic, paprika, saffron and rosemary.
Add the sieved and chopped tomatoes.
Pour in the water and bring to the boil. Simmer until rice is cooked (15-20 minutes). Five minutes before the rice is cooked, add the mussels.
Garnish with fresh coriander and lemon wedges. Enjoy
Enoy!
Hi and welcome to my blog! I’m Tony O’Reilly (not of Heinz or rugby (unfortunately) but married some 30yrs, father of four great kids plus one dog, living by the sea in Balbriggan, Co Dublin.
 I’ve devoted my life to food from an early age, I have always been interested in cooking and tastes. At fourteen, I started to cook my own ‘dinners’ and enjoyed making some strange concoctions and experimenting! Some tasted good and some….. well, not so good! The latter landed in the recycler - that’s the dog in our house!
I’m an inquisitive so and so and always ask questions like, ’ What if?’, ‘ What if I burn the onions’, ‘how does it alter the flavour of the meat’,’ how much should I burn them to get the flavour I desire?’,’ What if I put freshly sieved tomato and garlic over my grilled cod instead of a cooked sauce’ and so on. You may say that this has been happening for years but I was doing it way back in the 70s, 1971 to be precise!
After leaving school I headed for the local catering college and, after two years’ qualified as a ‘chef’. Wow, what did I know? Well very little besides the basic fundamentals, methods of cookery and how to distinguish a Portobello from a porcini! I therefore set out on my first of many culinary pilgrimages to travel the world and discover the ultimate eating experience. Now for some that eating experience might be finding the most expensive and rarest ingredient but that’s not for me, sure I have eaten gold leaf chocolates, the finest Beluga caviar and fresh white truffles on the side of a mountain in north Italy, but I enjoy peasant food, what the ‘man on the street’ eats, real food, simple, earthy and tasty. To this end I present you with this week’s culinary treat a mouth-watering paella. It also offers you an alternative use for the BBQ you kept in the shed this year!
 Paella with Seafood,Chicken and Chorizo (4-6 people)
Ingredients
100g Chorizo, sliced into cubes
4 Chicken legs, cut in pieces
2 tbsp. Olive oil
1 Onion, chopped
1 Red & yellow peppers, deseeded and sliced
100g Mange tout trimmed and chopped
2large Tomatoes, grated
2 cups 200g paella/bomba rice
150g Tinned chopped tomatoes
1 litres (approx.) Water
4 Garlic cloves, crushed
1 tbsp. Paprika
pinch Saffron strands
Sall fist Fist full rosemary
25g Fresh coriander, picked and chopped
200g Seafood mix
200g Mussels, prepared
 4-6 Lemon wedges, to serve (I forgot!!)
Method
Heat the oil in a paellera (Paella pan).
Gently fry the chicken then add the chorizo and fry for a further 8-10 minutes. Season with salt.
Add the fish and continue cooking for 2-3 minutes.
Add the vegetables and sauté until soft.
Add the rice and stir in well.
Add the garlic, paprika, saffron and rosemary.
Add the sieved and chopped tomatoes.
Pour in the water and bring to the boil. Simmer until rice is cooked (15-20 minutes). Five minutes before the rice is cooked, add the mussels.
Garnish with fresh coriander and lemon wedges. Enjoy
Enoy!
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