Cook my Chicken Basque

4 x meaty chicken thighs
1 pack sausages or cooking chorizo
1 cup measure risotto or paella rice (this is important, don't use easy cook rice in this recipe)
1 large or 2 small red onions
2 sweet peppers
Garlic cloves
1 tin or pack crushed tomatoes/passata
250ml chicken or vegetable stock or mixture of 1 glass white wine and chicken stock.
Sweet smoked paprika (look for a little square tin labelled 'pimenton')
A few strands of saffron
Salt/Pepper
A few sprigs of fresh thyme or a pinch of dried thyme
A strip of orange rind
Lemon segments to serve - and a sprinkling of fresh parsley if you wish

Heavy casserole or pot that you can use on the stove top

Chorizo is a spicy Spanish sausage. There are two types. One is air dried and you serve it in slices as a tapas dish or in a salad.

The other type is not dried but soft and fresh and is intended for cooking with. You can leave the skin on or not, but if you skin it, be prepared for stained fingers. The cooking type can be found in little fat bite size sausages or larger ones. Leave the little ones whole and cut larger ones into bite size pieces.

If you don't have or can't get chorizo you can use a well flavoured link sausage - I suppose you could even use hot dogs if you like their flavour, but they have too much preservative to find their way into my kitchen. Merguez - a hot lamb sausage from Morocco is another possibility if you like chilli.

Britain has a wonderful range of fresh sausages, check out your butcher or supermarket and choose something herby and/or spicy. Sainsburys do a wonderful Sicilian sausage which would work very well. Waitrose have a good choice too with some branches selling them on the fresh meat counter. See what's on special offer.

I have a fabulous award-winning sausage shop called O'Hagans near me. They make a range of flavoured sausages based on local ingredients. Find them at the Emsworth Delicatessen in West Street or at their shop at the Woolpack pub in Fishbourne, West Sussex just outside Chichester. According to their website, they have introduced their own version of chorizo to an Argentinian recipe. I've yet to try these but sound very good.

The preparation for this dish takes quite a while, and I worked out a way to shorten it a bit. Turn the oven on to 200C or equivalent. Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper and start them off cooking, skin side up in a tablespoon of olive oil. Throw some whole garlic cloves and the sprigs of thyme in with the chicken or sprinkle with the dried herb before you put it in the oven. Put them in cold, no need to pre-heat. Then get on with the rest.

De-seed the peppers and cut into about 8-12 chunky pieces each. Throw in with the roasting chicken. This will help to bring out the sweetness of the peppers in the final dish and is better than frying.

Prepare your sausages or chorizo. I skin larger sausages and chop the meat into two, then roll into little balls. These need cooking over a higher heat to get some of the fat out of them, so they go into a frying pan while I do the other preparations. Finely chop the red onion and soften in a tablespoon of olive oil over a low heat in your flame-proof casserole or stewpot. While this happens, put a kettle on if you will need it to make stock from a cube or powder. If you have home made stock all ready, well done you!

I pour myself a glass of wine at this point and have a good swig!

Now measure out exactly one cup measure of risotto or paella rice. This recipe needs the absorbency of the larger grains for the right texture at the end. Turn the rice with the onion till it is shiny and coated with the oil and the edges are going transparent. Don't let it stick and burn. Put in your tin or tetrapak of crushed tomatoes and give it a good stir. Add the wine and half the stock. Keep the rest in case the dish dries out during cooking. Rice is a variable thing and the tomatoes may be more or less liquid depending on brand.

Add the flavourings - a few strands of saffron, a teaspoon of 'pimenton' and some salt and pepper. The orange rind is more important than you think. Don't leave it out. Even the rind from an old dried out orange will do if that is all you have in the kitchen. Peel it thinly without the white pith.

While your fragrant pot comes up to a subtle simmer, stand still, turn over your little sausage balls in their frying pan and take a moment to savour your wine. Now, you can pop the part cooked sausage balls or chorizo into the pot one by one without any fat that has come from them. In the oven, your chicken will have begun to turn golden. Sure, you can do that on the stove top too, but my way saves time.

Add the chicken, pepper pieces and garlic cloves and thyme to the rest of the ingredients. The chicken pieces should go in last and sit on the top.

Now you can either put this all back in the oven and turn the heat down to about 150C or gas equivalent, or put it on the stove on the lowest possible heat. If you cook on gas, one of those heat diffuser things is advisable. Those of you who have an Aga or Rayburn for cooking will know where to complete the cooking slowly. From this point, the dish will take about 30-40 mins. Check it half way to make sure it isn't too dry and add the rest of the stock if it is.

Serve the dish with a generous squeeze of lemon juice over each portion.

If you are re-heating another day, it is best to take out the bones from the chicken thighs and chop the meat into bite-size chunks to make sure it is all evenly heated. Microwave is fine if you are careful that each plateful is heated through.