Wet Rice.
Cooking time: approx 40 minutes Serves: 4-6
So the weather is beautiful, there’s lil’ birds a chirping and all such other lovely things, you don’t want to be hovering around the stove do you? Well good news you can just chuck everything in a pot and let it simmer gently away and forget about your troubles for a while. The beautiful aromas from this fragrant one-pot will perfume the air with the floral scent of saffron  and the beautiful smell of paprika. Serve comforting dish with a slab of dipping bread the mop up the leftover sauce. Because summer is actually a great time to make bread, its lovely and warm and same with this one-pot meal, you can just leave it to do its stuff and come back too it every now and then!

Ingredients:
3 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup paella rice/ bomba rice
1 tsp cumin
3 tsp paprika (a good sweet or mild one, not hot)
3/4 cup dried green lentils, rinsed
1 cup dried Portobello mushrooms rehydrated, liquid reserved
2 tins chopped tomatoes
2 cups vegetable stock (use as needed)
1 small pinch saffron threads (optional)
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
10 olives, sliced (spanish green olives if you can)
1 tbsp capers

Method:
Heat the oil in a big pot, wok or paella pan and saute the onion until softened, add the garlic and saute for a few minutes more until the garlic becomes fragrant. Add the paella rice and toss around in the oil to coat it. Toss through the cumin and paprika and toss everything around for about a minute. Now add the remaining ingredients, going down the list and adding the one by one, bring the contents of the pot up to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Bubble away for about 30 minutes or so, giving a stir every now and then and adding more stock as needed, until the lentil and rice are tender, remove the bay leafs and serve.

Olive and caper dipping bread.

Ingredients:
3 cups Italian OO grade flour (can use plain white flour instead)
1 tbsp dried active yeast
1 tbsp sugar
1 1/4 cup tepid water
1 tsp fine sea salt
2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for kneading

2 1/2 tbsp green olives, plus extra for topping
1 tbsp capers, plus extra for topping
stone ground semolina for coating

Method:
partially mix together the flour, yeast sugar and water- then add the salt and olive oil, continue mixing until the dough comes together then transfer to an oiled surface and knead  for about 8-10 minutes until you have a nice glutenous dough. Drizzle a little oil into a bowl and toss the dough in the oil to coat. Cover with cling film and leave for about 2 hours in a warm place (just on the counter if it’s a very hot day) and allow to rise until a little bit more than doubled in size. Finely chop the olives and the capers together in a food processor (don’t puree). Punch the dough down into the bowl and sprinkle in the chopped olives and capers, fold the dough over and into itself to distribute the olives/capers evenly throughout the dough. You can flour your hands a little to handle the dough if its sticky.  Line a cookie sheet/ baking sheet with parchment paper and brush the paper generously with olive oil, sprinkle with semolina and stretch the dough out into a big rectangle using your hands, place it on the parchment paper, brush with olive oil and press sliced olives and a few capers into the top before brushing with oil and sprinkling the top with semolina. Allow to rise back up to about double again and press your fingers into the top of the dough to dent it, bake in a preheated oven at 210c/ 410f for about 25- 30 minutes until golden, allow to cool on a cooling rack until completly cooled, serve and enjoy.