For Emma's mom.
The trick to a good paella is use the freshest ingredients available and make your own stock. My favorite is seafood paella, and this recipe is for seafood paella in particular, however one can always adjust accordingly, especially to what is in season- and this is the secret to a good paella.
Long story short, the steps to make a good paella are to make stock, cook all ingredients, cook the rice, add the cooked ingredients back in during the last minutes of cooking and serve.
Ingredients:
Saffron
Olive oil
a lot of Garlic
Uncooked prawns with shells (very important to get the blue uncooked ones)
Fresh squid and any other seafood desired
Onions
Carrots
Bell Peppers
Paella Rice
White wine
Fish cube/stock
Lemons
Method:
Toast the saffron in the empty pan until you smell the aroma. Set aside.
In the same pan add a bit of olive oil and non-peeled whole garlic cloves. Once the garlic sizzles add the shrimp. Cook the shrimp until it turns red. Beware to not have the fire too high as the garlic shouldn't burn. Set the shrimp aside. Repeat this step until all shrimp is cooked. It is better to cook two sets than to overcrowd the pan.
Let the shrimp cool slightly. Peel the shrimp. Put all shrimp peels (including heads) and garlic cloves into a pot. Add boiling water. On a small flame boil on a low steady heat on the side.
In the same pan, add more oil. Cook the squid. Set aside. Repeat with all the seafood ingredients.
Chop finely the carrots, onions, bell peppers and garlic.
Add oil back into the pan. Sauté the carrots, onions, bell peppers and garlic.
While the vegetables are sautéing, is a good time to strain the shrimp peel liquid (aka your stock). Sieve into a measuring cup. Make sure the liquid has changed color, if it hasn't, pause the vegetable sauté and keep boiling the shrimp peels and only sieve once the color has changed. If needed add fish stock into this broth.
Back to the pan with the sautéing vegetables. Pour in the amount of rice needed. Wait for the rice to warm up. Add some white wine.
Once the wine cooks off, add the double amount of homemade stock into the pan. If there isn't sufficient stock top of with water.
Let this slowly boil. Half way through cooking stir. Otherwise, try not to touch the rice too much. Keep an eye out that there is always a little water in the pan and the rice doesn't go dry.
10 minutes before the rice is done add back in all the cooked seafood and peas if desired.
Serve with lemon.
Comments