quick shrimp sort-of paella

Terry found a recipe in the current Cooking Light for Shortcut Shrimp Paella. I decided to give the recipe a try on a recent Saturday, but as usual I cannot leave well enough alone. My version varied a lot from the original.

Quick Shrimp sort-of Paella

serves 2

Ingredients

• 1 cup brown rice
• 1 bell pepper
• 1 Serrano chili (optional)
• frozen  peas
• 18 medium shrimp, peeled, deveined, and cooked
• butter
• saffron
• garlic powder
• Old Bay seasoning

Procedure

1. Put the rice on to cook with 2 cups water.
2. Chop the bell pepper and the Serrano chili.
3. Remove the tails from the shrimp.
4. Add a few threads of saffron to the rice.
5. Add the bell pepper and the chili to the rice.
6. Add the frozen peas.
7. Heat a pan with olive oil, add the shrimp, and season with Old Bay.
8. Add butter with garlic to the pan.
9. Put the rice on two plates. Put the shrimp on the rice and drizzle with the butter.
10. Serve.

As the original recipe pointed out, paella usually has several kinds of seafood and additional protein such as chicken. It takes several hours to make. But this is a nice shortcut. I deviated from the original recipe in a number of ways. It called for instant rice, which is against my religion. It specified turmeric as a substitute for saffron, but I had saffron on hand, and so used it. The original said to cook everything in one pan; I cooked the shrimp separately.

The result was a very tasty Saturday dinner.