Paella — a hint of more to come...

Above: Paella about to go into the oven.  (Click for a larger image, as always.)

A year ago, Joe and I were getting ready to leave for our trip to Spain and Morocco. (and I swear I will be posting about Morocco. I think the one year anniversary is a good time to finally get around to it) Anyway... we oddly did not eat much paella in Spain. I think we had some at a couple tapas bars. But we did not sit down at a restaurant specializing in paella and stuff ourselves silly.

Last weekend, I fixed that oversight by making my first paella. I made a "tourist's paella" of mixed meat and seafood, with chicken, pork, Spanish chorizo, tilapia, squid, and mussels using a recipe from Penelope Casas's Paella! cookbook. I served this up to a group of friends and was incredibly pleased when one of them said "The seafood and meat are good, but the rice is fantastic."

Hooray! They get it. They get what paella is about!

And yeah was that rice delicious. I used arborio rice as the closest substitute I had on hand for the Spanish rice. Flavored very simply with Spanish smoked paprika, saffron, chicken broth, salt, and of course the juices and flavors from the seafood and meat.

Sadly I did not achieve the magical bottom crust. Obviously I must practice more. (Oh, the hardship!) I am going to hold off posting paella recipes until I know how to make that crust.

Below: at a later stage -- you can see a lot of the liquid has been soaked up -- with the chicken and mussels added...

Comments

[Jen of a2eatwrite]

Try the blog annos-place.blogspot.com

She's another Ann Arbor area blogger and she makes paella frequently. I think she has a couple of posts about it, but you could just ask her in any case about the crust, etc. I really feel Paella is food of the gods. ;-) Your photos looked lovely.

[Raymond Drainville]

Hiya,

I'm not familiar with the recipe you were using--but a good friend of ours from Valencia (the home of paella!) gave us some good general tips:

* Chicken, veggies, cook at a moderate heat.
* When you add your water/stock/whatever your recipe requires, cook it at a low temperature for about 20-30 mins, or until most of the liquid has evaporated.
* Now: put that burner on full-blast for 1-5 mins. I hover over the paella at this point & turn the heat down when I start smelling something burning. Here's where you're preparing your soccarat.
* Now to moisten that soccarat: cover the pan with a sheet of newspaper (our friend was very adamant about this), set your burner to low & cook for 15-25 minutes. The newspaper helps re-moisten the paella.

Let stand for about 10 mins. Serve. Eat it all up, as it'll be completely fantastic.

Hope this helps,

Ray

[Kitchen Chick]

Hi Ray. The inlaws just passed on the recipe. We rarely have any newspaper on hand, but perhaps I can use a paper grocery bag.

[Dr. Electro]

I admire your fortitude in making paella. I have tried and failed miserably. The taste comes out all right but the appearance and texture leave a lot to be desired. Keep trying. I might just try it again out of sheer stubbornness.

[Kitchen Chick]

Dr. Electro: are you using a paella pan?