Arroz Amarillo Con Chorizo y Garbanzo (Yellow Rice with Spanish Sausage and Chickpeas)

This is not my grandmother's recipe or anything like that, this is my recipe and I sorta made it up, well kinda.

I had seen a recipe behind the GOYA pack of dried garbanzos (or was it the can?), for yellow rice and chickpeas, I had also seen a recipe like that in another Cuban group, also on my blog when I posted "Arroz Amarillo Con Salchichas" one of my readers Mamey commented on rice with Spanish sausage.

So after a while of just thinking (I tend to day dream and yes sometimes I'll day dream about food and come up with idea's) I thought that a combination of Spanish Chorizo and Garbanzo would go really well cooked/ steamed together with rice. Sort of like a rice version of my grandma's (Tata's) Potaje de Garbanzo except no potatoes, cabbage, or squash, or chunks of pork or beef, just sausage and chickpeas and rice seasoned in the same fashion (yes yes I know I suck at expressing myself sometimes)

Ingredients:

-3 cups white long-grain rice

-water (depends 1 1/2 cups for regular long grain rice per 1 cup rice or equal water to rice for a new crop long-grain white jasmine rice)

-1-2 cans of drained and rinsed canned chickpeas/ garbanzo (I used 1 but if I had another can I would've added 2)

-2 links of "El Mino" Spanish Chorizo or 1/2 of regular "Chorizo Espanol" (I use Palacio's "Chorizo Autentico Espanol") remove casing, and thinly sliced into rounds.

-1 small- medium green or red bell pepper finely chopped

-1 medium onion finely chopped

-1/2 a head garlic mashed to a paste (mortar or garlic press, if you don't have just finely mince)

-extra-virgin olive oil (as needed to sautee, etc. atleast 1/4 cup)

-1/2- 1 teaspoon ground cumin

-1 teaspoon Bijol or even better for this dish I think "Saffron"

-2 bay leaves
-atleast 2 tsp. salt or more (tastethe rice water if it's salty like the ocean that's good)

Directions:
(1)Wash rice until water runs clear about 2-3 times. Add water, and set aside in rice cooker.

(2)Heat extra-virgin olive oil on medium to medium high heat, when hot enough add sliced spanish chorizo, fry the chorizo until the color and spices of the chorizo infuse into the oil (it won't take long maybe 1-2 minutes), now add onion and bell pepper sautee for 7 minutes or so until translucent, add garlic and sautee another 2-3 minutes.

(3)Turn off heat and add the sautee to the rice, add drained rinsed garbanzos, cumin, bay leaves, bijol or saffron and salt. Cover and turn on rice cooker, wait for it to beep when it beeps it's done, uncover and fluff rice and mix gently then serve.

(4)You can adjust the recipe to cook it on stovetop (simply sautee all the stuff, add washed drained rice seal it in the oil, add water, spices, chickpeas bring to boil and cover on low for about 30 minutes or so.

P.S.

Everyone in my house loved this dish, we served it with some "Camarones en Salsa Criolla" (shrimp in Cuban tomato based Creole sauce) and "Ensalada de Aji" (Fire roasted bell pepper in garlic lime sauce)

I know some may think, "Oh gosh another lame yellow rice dish they are all so the same" my response, "THEY ARE NOT!" they have common components but the slight changes make a huge impact on the taste of the resulting dish, the strong smokey flavor of the Spanish Sausage that is packed with spanish paprika makes this dish unique and have a distinct flavor, the little Chickpeas get flavored by everything and taste so good in there so don't leave them out I insist.

Hehe I'm posting this from my father's lap top, turns out he's okay with me storing my food pics in his computer for now :) until I get my computer back.