Tag Archives: paella

December 3, 2012

Repost: Paella

Paella is one of those things that I don’t make ‘properly’, as I explain in this post from March 2011, but I do enjoy it when it’s done. I’ve tried a couple of variations including this one which is quite classic, an oxtail and chorizo version and one made out of whatever I could find in the fridge. I’ve been known to eat the leftovers on a sandwich. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, yeah?

I’ve done paella before here on Rock Salt, but it looks so pretty that I decided there was no harm in doing it again. This decision has nothing to do with the fact that I’ve not been very good at blogging and this is something that I have pictures of. Nuh-uh. The recipe is based on Gordon Ramsay’s in his Sunday Lunch cookbook, but with a bit of tailoring; I made two chicken thighs, and it served two with enough for two chicken-free lunches (or one massive chicken-free lunch) the next day, or you could add another two chicken thighs and serve four, if you weren’t all starving/greedy/chorizo mad.

one small onion, chopped
two cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
several sticks of thyme
one chorizo ring, sliced
two chicken thighs, skinned (or four, if you’re cooking for four)
200g long grain rice. This isn’t proper paella rice but it works for me.
one red bell pepper, diced
six cherry tomatoes, quartered
small handful of frozen peas
handful of frozen prawns
handful of parsley, chopped

And here is a separate list of ingredients for flavouring and seasoning…

olive oil
salt and pepper
chili flakes
tabasco
lemon juice
lemon oil

There is also basil oil in the photo – this particular brand doesn’t get the Rock Salt seal of approval; it’s not basil oil so much as something made up to resemble basil oil and look striking when used as a garnish. It doesn’t taste like basil. It tastes like if you took basil into a chemical laboratory and exposed it to all kinds of dreadful experiments, ending in a blast in a uranium tanning bed.

Real basil oil would have been nice, though.

So, how to make paella? I should fess up here and say that I don’t think any Spaniards would be enamoured with my attempt, or with this recipe. For a start, there’s no saffron in this recipe, because I forgot all about it. Eeee-diot. For another, my paella doesn’t have a layer of toasted rice at the bottom, which is essential to a proper paella. For a third, I made it in the unSpanishest of utensils, the wok. Let’s say it’s a Spanish-influenced delicious rice dish and move on.

The first thing I did was cook the onions, garlic and thyme in a little olive oil until the onions were transparent, then I added the chorizo. The onions soon took on the colour from the sausage and the whole kitchen smelled delicious – result. I pushed all the ingredients to the edge of the wok (gently though, I didn’t want them to feel upset or upstaged) and put the chicken in to brown, letting it sit for five minutes on each side. I probably could have been doing with a little more oil before I did this, as the chicken did stick a little, but I wasn’t cooking for the Queen or anything so it was alright, really.

Once the chicken was browned on both sides, I added the rice and stirred it around as best I could with those great lumps of chicken in the way. You want to get the rice all amongst the flavours without browning it, at this stage. Later, you’re supposed to build up a browned layer on the bottom of the pan, but I’ve already admitted my ignorance on this point. We’ll say no more about it. Once the rice had soaked up some colour and flavour, I added enough boiling water to cover it by a depth of about 1 cm. I left it at a good simmer for 15 minutes, and checked. The aim is to have the rice absorb all the water without becoming over-cooked. At 15 minutes it was still a bit more al dente than I wanted, but this was according to plan (no, really) because now I was going to add the peas, prawns, pepper and tomatoes to the pan, along with some seasoning, a teaspoon of chili flakes and a dash of jalapeno Tabasco. I stirred it all together and took off the heat, but covered over with this glass lid that definitely did not come with the wok. Does the job though, keeping everything warm and still cooking slightly, apart from those bits round the edges. They’re fine, I’m sure they’re fine.

Drizzle with some lemon oil and leave covered like this – or, with a proper lid or a sheet of tinfoil – for another five minutes, then stir through and taste. Also check that your poultry is cooked through, and not pink right at the bone like the piece I served the G man on Saturday. Mine was cooked through. I think I must have psychically known. Sh… Half an hour of cooking time should be enough for a normal sized thigh but if they’re biguns, give them extra time at the start, before the rice goes into the pan (or wok) – maybe brown for eight minutes a side, something like that.Before serving, add a dash of lemon juice and stir through the parsley, as well as adjusting the seasoning if you need to. Et voila! Or whatever the Spanish equivalent is!

The great thing about paella is you can call it paella mixta and fire in whatever you fancy, or whatever you have to hand. More seafood is good – I was hoping to get langoustines but was disappointed. Mussels or clams are good in there, or different meats like rabbit or duck, and apparently snails are very traditional. It’s a free for all, really. I wouldn’t, and haven’t, claimed to have the technique perfect, but it’s not something to be scared of. Even if it turns out a wee bit mushy, who cares?

Unless you’ve got the Queen coming round.

one small onion, chopped

1 comment | tags: cooking, paella, rice | posted in Dairy free, Gluten free, Original recipes, Spanish food, Spicy food

August 21, 2011

What’s in the Fridge Paella

By Rock Salt

Well, I’m having one of those months where there are too many days and not enough dollars (except really it’s pounds but dollars sounds much better). In an attempt to combat this I’m trying to eat food that I already have around the kitchen, whether in the fridge, freezer or cupboard. This is almost certainly the best meal I’ll manage to make from these leftovers and scraps, since it includes a chorizo ring that was in the fridge. Not a common item to just happen to have lying around, or at least not in my house it’s not, but on this occasion it was there, patiently waiting. I’d bought it with the idea of putting it in a batch of chili I was making, but changed my mind at the last minute. I’m glad now that I did, because it meant the G man and I could have what felt like quite a luxurious dinner without having to spend any money on ingredients. Now I’m down to tins of ‘sandwich tuna’, which is an affront to the good name of tinned tuna, and various dried beans, pulses, pastas and rice, and various frozen veg. I can definitely make some nice, if simple, meals out of those things, but I think they’ll feel very much like meals made of leftovers, you know?

I’ve blogged about paella before, though on that occasion it was the rather more fancy oxtail and chorizo paella with truffle oil. This time I stuck pretty closely to the Gordon Ramsay recipe from his Sunday Lunch recipe book, using the chorizo, a couple of chicken thighs I also had in the fridge and some frozen prawns, frozen peas, frozen sweetcorn, a stem of cherry tomatoes, a lemon of indeterminate age, two chilis of obviously advanced age, half a red onion and a few spring onions, the latter two of which were lurking around in the salad drawer of my fridge. I finished off the long grain white rice from the cupboard, and made up the difference with brown rice – it’s not really ideal to mix the two, since they cook at different rates, but I managed to pull it off, even though I completely forgot my intention to put the brown rice in first and the white later. Miracles will never cease. The contents of my apothecary chest, spice drawer and condiments cupboard also came heavily into play in making the paella taste like a proper meal and not a meal cobbled together out of bits and pieces.

I started off my cooking the red onion (chopped) and the spring onions (sliced into rounds) in my wok with several stems of dried thyme leaves (also a salad drawer refugee) and the sliced chorizo, all in a spot of olive oil. When the onion was softened and everything had taken the colour and flavour of chorizo, I added the rice, and stirred to coat all the grains. I added enough water to cover the rice by about 1cm, a pinch of saffron (the idea of this being a budget meal is becoming more ludicrous by the minute) and left at a medium simmer for fifteen minutes.

After this time, I checked the water levels then stirred in the chicken, which I broke up into bite sized pieced (depending on the size of your bite), the tomatoes (quartered) and all the other ingredients from the chopping board. I also seasoned the paella with salt, pepper, lemon juice and jalapeno Tabasco. I turned the heat down to prevent any burning and after another ten minutes checked it again. There was still more liquid than I would have liked, so I tried turning the heat right down and spreading the paella thinly around the base and sides of the wok, to let it dry out. This didn’t really work, a better plan would have been to add less water right at the start, but until I invent a time machine this method was the only one open to me. I tasted the rice to check the seasoning and, when I was happy, served it up with lemon wedges as garnish.

To summarise today’s post, I had a lot of good stuff in my kitchen and I used it all up at once, rather than making several meals with one good ingredient each. The other moral of the story is that I’m not a paella expert, particularly when it comes to how much water to add, and this just goes to prove that it’s not a scary dish to attempt, because even if it doesn’t go perfectly you’ve still got a most excellent dinner in front of you. Especially if you put chorizo in it.

It’s not exactly an Aesop’s fables kind of moral, is it?