Fake paella

I made real paella once. It took about twenty ingredients and took forever to cook and wasn't that good. Last night I briefly glanced at a paella recipe and then improvised from there, and it was pretty good.

2/3 cup medium-grain rice
1 Tbs olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
sun-dried onions, reconstituted with boiling water (keep the water)
1 zucchini and 2 yellow summer squash diced or thinly sliced
various mild peppers (about 5)
Gimme Lean sausage
1 cup torn basil leaves


Sautee the garlic in the olive oil over medium-high heat in a large pan. Add the onions, sausage, and squash and sautee. I wanted roasted peppers, so I threw the peppers in a dry pan over high heat and turned them until they were blackened in several places, then rubbed off the skins and cut the peppers into strips. Add them too. Sautee everything for about five minutes, stirring frequently, then scoot everything over to one side of the pan and add a little more oil. Pour in the rice and stir it briefly into the oil, then mix everything together (veggies, sausage and rice) and add 2 cups water. Stir occasionally and cook until all the water has been absorbed by the rice. Add the basil and stir until it wilts. Salt to taste.

I can't entirely remember all the seasonings I threw in here -- this is why I try to blog the same night. Oh well. It was really pretty good.

Oh, the only reason I used sun-dried onions is that they're all I had and it really needed onion.