My housemate recently lamented that she quite liked (and missed Paella), a typical fare originating from Valencia in Spain. Last night, we hopped over to the supermarket to pick up a couple of things, and broke open our new pan that we had been using for stock since we didn't have a shallow one big enough enough to house all the ingredients. The final product turned out quite well, and this recipe works for me even ifthough the picture above seems to tell a tale of a Chinese Fried Rice. I digress. Just for keepsakes, here's the process:
From grocery bag to plate time: 45 mins
Season 4 mini chicken breasts fillets (about 120 g?) with a little salt and pepper and dredge in plain flour to cover. Drizzle a few ribbons of olive oil into a hot pan and slide in chicken pieces to fry on medium heat till golden brown.
While waiting, chop up 200g chirozo sausage (we used iberico chorizo fresh from the butcher), 1 medium yellow onion, 4 cloves of garlic and 2 pointed red peppers (or bell peppers if you wish but we like the pointy ones as they are sweeter).
Set chicken pieces aside. At this point, heat in another pan 1.8 l of organic chicken stock and seperate into two portions. Keeping the pan on the stove, add the sausage and fry a little till fragrant (about 5 mins) and add in chopped up onion / garlic / peppers. Leave veges and sausage to sweat a little more. While sweating, add a good pinch of saffron threads into one portion of the stock and let it infuse for about 10 minutes.
To the paella pot add 500g of paella rice / long grain rice and stir everything together so the rice gets a lovely coat of flavours. Pour in the saffron-infused stock, cover and bring the pan to a simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, sort of bringing the rice into the centre of the pan(to avoid any rice sticking and for even cooking). Pour the rest of the stock into the pan and let it continue to do its thing for another 10 minutes, stirring occassionally.
Mix in 100g of mixed seafood (squid / mussels / prawns) and a handful of peas (large or small depending on how much you like these petit pois. Cover and let the seafood cook for another 10 minutes. Slice up chicken into bit sized pieces and chop up a bunch of parsley. Switch heat off, stir in chicken pieces and chopped up parsley. Let the pan rest for two minutes, and gather up plates for serving. With 1 lemon, squeeze juice of half into paella and give rice a final stir. slice up the other half into wedges for serving with plated final product. Blissed out.
Ps: if you don't like chicken, replace with equal portion of fish or more seafood :)
3 comments:
this must be one of your longest posts in a long time!
randomly, can you pls tell me why your Etsy favourites is not your profile??
is Paella rice the same as Risotto?
dunno wat u mean by the etsy thingy leh? it's there?
paella rice not the same, we checked online and used long grain rice (cos they were out of paella rice at the store). some people use risotto rice but it becomes abit too stodgy then.
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