Dal Paella (by G)

I had the idea the other day to get inspiration for a meal by having Biggs tell me the name of a dish with a brief description and try to make it based on no other information. Biggs was prepared with a dish, 'Fideua' a paella made without rice.

The obvious thing to do would be to replace the rice with risoni but that didn't seem like much of a challenge so I decided to substitute with some little dried beans. Well, I couldn't find small enough beans when I went shopping so I said, 'Fuck it' and bought some dal. How bad could it be?

Never having even cooked regular paella before I just fried some onion, garlic and chorizo in a pan then added the dal, some peeled and deseeded tomatoes and some vegetable stock along with some saffron I'd soaked in boiling water, then simmered the shit out of it. For the protein component I went away from the classic seafood combinations (mostly because it is so hot at the moment I was a bit worried about the seafood becoming re-animated and crawling away) instead I went with chorizo sausage, chicken thigh and some roasted pork belly.

When the meal was thick enough to eat with a fork I slopped it on a plate and topped it with some thin sliced raw onion and fresh coriander.

It turned out okay - I forgot to add lemon. The best thing was the various meats, I should have just cooked an all meat paella.