Friday, October 28, 2005
Perfect Paella
In Spain On A Plate Maria Jose Sevilla refers to cocina de aprovechamiento - the efficient use of available ingredients - and this is definitely the style of cooking you will find in my kitchen.
Whist many foreign residents will spend fortunes buying imported food that is familiar to them, I prefer to make adaptations of local dishes using the cheaper, healthier local ingredients.
Where possible, these ingredients come right off the land.
The moors brought rice to the Iberian Peninsular in the eighth century and paella started it's life as a peasant dish, eaten in the fields and vegetable gardens. Now it is considered more "special" and often gets reserved for parties. This is a shame, I think, because it is so simple to prepare to enjoy for every day.
Purists will probably say that you have to be born and brought up around Valencia to make a "real" paella. Locals here too will call anything that doesn't adhere to a strictly traditional paella recipe, merely "arroz" - rice. Whether my paella inglessa is a paella or an arroz is, I think, less important than getting my dinner!
So, this is not your snobby, professional paella, this is something to eat!
Where I am most fortunate is that I can buy ready mixed spices or even pick saffron right out of the fields. I can also buy mixed packs of seafood; prawns, muscles, cockles, squid, etc. There are two types of these packs - ones specifically intended for paella that include spices and vegetables, which I am not at all keen on, or ones that are just seafood "selection packs", intended to make a seafood salad and which I prefer to use half with rice and use the rest to make a seafood soup.
If you do not have these packs available, you can buy seafood items separately, of course, including, at the very least, prawns and muscles. With or without shell, as you wish. For "high days and holidays" add a few langostines whole. If you are dead broke or want to make paella for kids, you can even chop imitation crab sticks into it! 
Ingredients (4 portions appox.)
Seafood of your preference
Onion, peeled and chopped
Red pepper, peeled and chopped
Olive oil
Paella spices (saffron and sweet paprika)
Handful of frozen peas
Six tablespoons of rice
600 cc fish stock
Method
Soften the onion and the red pepper in a little olive oil. Add the seafood and fry for a couple of minutes. Add a teaspoon or so of spices (to taste). Add the rice and stir so that it all gets yellow colored. Throw in the handful of peas. Cover with the stock, then turn the heat right down low and walk away. It should take about 20-30 minutes cook, depending on quantity, until all the water is absorbed and the rice is evenly cooked.
My Personal Tips
Two things are essential: cook the paella on the largest, widest burner you have or it will cook unevenly. The other is that you must resist all temptations to stir it.
The fish stock can readily be made with a fish bullion cube.
The proportions mentioned here are merely ones that I have experimented with and found to work for me. That is 100 cc of water to each tablespoon of rice. More and it stays wet. Less and the rice doesn't cook. Stick to those proportions and you can make more or less paella, depending on the number of portions you require.
100 cc = 0.211337641 US pints OnlineConversion.com
Six tablespoons of rice assumes you will serve this as a main dish. You may get more portions if you serve it as the fish course or less if you are very hungry types!
Serve with slices of lemon and the beverage of your choice.
Supplies
If you don't have the selections I do in the regular supermarket, US viewers can get everything for paella making; the proper rice, saffron, paprika, fish bullion cubes, paella dishes or entire kits from Tienda.com. I guarantee that your mouth will water browsing there. Some of their products are also available from Amazon
If you are based in or nearer the UK, get your paella dish here
If you are looking for authentic paella recipes, we recommended: Paella! by Penelope Casas US visitors | UK visitors
1 Comments:
On the 'Ingredients' section, you are forgetting GARLIC! Also, what about saffron, pimenton, colorante and bay leaf?
Your paella looks lovely in the pic but I can't imagine it without garlic and pimenton! Where onions and peppers go, garlic has surely to follow ...especially in Spain!
Felipe, Glasgow