Sort of Spanish Barbecued Chicken Stew.

Disaster has struck. My dishwasher is kaput. After bailing out 2 inches of mucky water at the bottom (which turns out to be about 8 litres, once it's in a bucket) and cleaning the filter etc my personal diagnosis is that the motor is fucked. They do have motors, right? I haven't been able to get anyone out to look at it yet, so I am back to washing up by hand.

It'll be a lot of one-pot meals and not a lot of elaborate cakes and so on until we can get it fixed.

I've posted before about sticking a pot on the fire. Not only do you get a one-pot meal (although the one pot takes quite a bit of washing), but there is something about the very fine, rapid bubble that means the sauce emulsifies to a rich, creamy texture with very little encouragement.

Browning the chicken thighs in the lovely chorizo oil

We started by browning chunks of chorizo in olive oil, then when they were well-browned and had given up some of their delicious red oil, we browned some bone-in, skin-in chicken thighs.

Once the skin on the thighs was really crisp and browned, in went sliced onions, garlic and peppers, a spoonful of sweet paprika and a hefty spoonful of pil pil seasoning, followed by a can of crushed tomatoes and some home-made chicken stock.

Beautifully browned chicken

Once everything was at a rollicking boil, in went some rice. We used arborio, but just because it was open - we were going for a fairly soupy consistency and didn't really need the particular starchy qualities of risotto rice. Then, when everything was very nearly perfectly cooked, we added some prawns, mussels and squid (i.e tub of seafood mix) and just let it finish in the heat.

In a perfect world, we would have finished this with a squeeze of lemon juice and a sprinkling of chopped parsley. We live in an imperfect world.

Splashes on the plate - further proof of the imperfection of the world