Chicken, Chorizo, Turnip & Chestnut Rice

Soupy rice, bay leaves, sweet chestnuts and paprika

Last week I cooked a new dish that I was very pleased with, a slightly soupy rice dish with a Spanish accent. It was only the second time I had cooked it, but I was pleased with the result: braised chicken legs stained red with paprika from the crumbled sausages, little cubes of turnip and pieces of nubbly chestnut bringing an earthy sweetness, bay leaves harmonising with everything nicely and plenty of garlic to keep things lively. The rice is cooked in the ensuing sticky stock until it has only a slight bite left but has released its starch into the sauce, making for a soulful plate of food.

I was feeling proud of my creation and happily dished it up, but soon my colleague was called over. Inedible, they said - the turnips were undercooked. I was confused. A cursory inspection of the offending veg left me perplexed, because I thought they were perfectly cooked: soft, but not mushy, with a slight bite. The customers were getting annoyed, and as they stood up to leave, their plates only half-eaten, one of the women berated me loudly in Italian from the middle of the café. My Italian is limited, but what I understood (with the help of her hand gestures) was that she was telling me that I was a terrible cook and that my food was awful.

This is fairly outrageous behaviour, I hope you will agree, even if you think your food wasn’t very good. As the third women was leaving she explained that even she knew how to cook potatoes better than this. Ah, they weren’t potatoes, madam, we explained, but turnips. I give up.

I suppose it serves me right for not writing turnip on the menu, but then again, if I did then no-one would have ordered it. My confidence was restored slightly by the customer who licked his plate clean. Maybe he had all the soft turnips? Who knows. In any case, dear reader, I hope you won’t be dissuaded by all this to try to cook this recipe, because turnips are one of my favourite vegetables, all peppery and sweet, and absorb the juices from the stew in a most satisfying fashion. Chicken, chorizo, turnip, chestnuts and bay is a wonderful combination, and one that feels festive, at least to me, especially when I’m not being shouted at.

Chicken, Chorizo, Chestnut & Turnip Rice
Serves 4

I like to braise this in the oven as I find that the rice cooks more evenly. If you have a enamel roasting tin that doesn’t mind being heated on the hob, this works very well.