Paella recipe ingredients for 4/6 people
Being a single dish, that is, a single course, I recommend to make it abundant.
- 500 grams of rice
- 1 whole chicken
- 200 grams of diced pork pulp
- 150 grams of spicy sausage
- 100 grams salami
- 400 grams of mussels
- 200 grams of shrimp
- 200 grams of shrimp tails
- 200 grams squid cut into rings
- a dozen whole langoustines
- 2 peppers
- 200 grams of peas
- 1 onion
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2 bay leaves
- 700 grams of chopped tomatoes
- 1 saffron saffron sachet
- olive oil
- chopped chilli
- nut broth
- Salt
- Pepper
To cook the paella, use the special wide and low-edge iron paella with two semi-circular handles or a very large circular iron pan that can then go into the oven.
Preparing Paella
Clean, wash and cut the chicken into small pieces, add the diced pork and cook for about twenty minutes all in a little olive oil, (4/5 tablespoons). After twenty minutes remove the pieces of meat from the pot and set aside.
In the same cooking bottom cook the spicy sausage cut into small pieces and the salami always in pieces. After about ten minutes remove the meat from the cooking bottom and add it to the chicken and pork.
Add a little oil to the remaining cooking bottom and cook a finely chopped onion until it becomes colored along with the garlic cloves that you will have crushed with a fork. Garlic cloves after browned should be removed. Now add the peeled tomatoes in pieces with the chopped chilli. Season with salt, pepper and cook for half an hour.
Meanwhile, prepare the mussels, which will be washed and brushed thoroughly. Put them in a pan, cover and put on the heat until they are open. Half you remove from the valves and add them to the meat you have already cooked, the other half leave them in the valves because they will garnish the surface of our paella.
The peppers should also be cooked lightly on the grill, so that the skin can be removed, after which the seeds are removed from strips or dice.
Let’s move on to the fish. Put the shrimp in a bowl, the shrimp tails the squid with a little olive oil and cook for 5 minutes turning often.
Now let’s take a large pan and put the chicken meat, pork, sausage, salami, peas, chopped peppers, bay leaf. Add at least a litre of broth and let it cook over low heat for about 20 minutes. After 20 minutes we also add the fish we cooked before and the mussels that we removed from the valves and let it cook for 10 minutes more.
Meanwhile, in our paella or circular iron pan, heat half a glass of olive oil, put the rice and toast lightly using a wooden spoon. Just lightly toasted add the mixture of tomatoes you had prepared before and mix it with the rice adding a little broth at a time. Melt the saffron bag in a tablespoon of broth and add it to the rice, stirring well. Incorporate all this plan plan add all the other ingredients with the cooking broth that was advanced and adding a little more broth if serving until the rice is cooked. At this point, the mussels with the valves we had left before and the langoustines that you have previously cooked on the grill are placed on the surface of the paella. Put the bowl in the already hot static oven at 180 degrees and let it cook for 5 minutes. Now our paella is ready to be brought to the table and enjoyed.
The wine suitable for this dish is a dry white served cold, and this is my favorite, although someone since there is also meat in the recipe prefers a good full-bodied red.
Paella designation
Its name: paella comes from the pan in which this recipe was prepared. It is a low-edged iron pan with two opposite grips. This dish consisting of rice, meats, fish, vegetables, cured meats, aromas and everything the cook considers appropriate to mix, is considered by foreigners a kind of emblem of Spanish cuisine, while authoritative Spanish writers call paella a dish impossible to classify, some call it baroque, but by many Spanish chefs it is considered a curiosity for tourists.
True is however that inherited from the period of Arab domination that Spain has suffered, many recipes of baked rice were imported, but in each using only certain elements, that is, only fish or only meat or only vegetables, The different Spanish regional cuisines made treasure of these recipes have modified them by inserting and mixing together the various elements, making them a unique dish complete with many variants.
The most common and cooked in Spain is the Valencian paella, then the mixed one, both meat and fish, but given the success that has gained species with foreigners led other regions to launch their own paella, so the Catalan paella was born , the Paella of Alicante, the paella navarrina etc. These are recipes subject to many variants that we will analyze later.
Common voices indicate the birth of this specialty around the fifteenth century and it was the lunch of the peasants, not rich as it happened later but were used the inductors of the countryside combined with rice. Traditionally paella is eaten at lunch and not dinner and is the Sunday dish for Spaniards.
Its place of origin is thought to be the extensive Albufera swamp, south of Valencia, where for centuries the ideal rice is grown for this preparation and many other ingredients of paella can also be found. It is thought that the original recipe included in addition to rice, only meat, chicken or rabbit and vegetables, then peasant and not marinara.
I have found various legends on the web regarding the origin of this dish and other curiosities, but I do not know how much they can be trusted. I propose them anyway because I found them very intriguing.
According to one of these one day in an inn in southern Spain he stopped to refuel a beautiful princess. The host enchanted by his beauty wanted to make a dish that was sensational, then I start to mix with saffron rice the most disparate ingredients, from meat to fish, to vegetables to aromas.
When the princess asked him the name of that dish that she liked so much the host who could not give it a name said simply pa ella, which in Spanish means to her.
Another curious anecdote of dubious provenance, refers to the period of occupation of Valencia by Napoleonic troops. There was a general in the city French who especially loved paella. This general promises the release of a Valencian prisoner every variant of paella that will make him taste. The camp’s cooks armed themselves with fantasy and churned out many variations, they are said to have managed to get more than 150 people liberal.
One more curiosity: the largest paella in the world. In 1992 the world’s largest paella was cooked by a restaurateur in Valencia. The paella measured twenty meters in diameter and on that occasion about 100,000 people were served.
The Spaniards even dedicated a day to paella. In fact, march 27 is celebrated the international Spanish Paella Day, a day on which in Spain everyone prepares paella, coinciding with the beginning of spring and evokes warm, sunny terraces, convivial companies gathered around this specialty, cook and enjoy outdoors if possible.
Let’s start with rice
It is important for the success of our paella to choose the right rice. The original recipe tells us the rice called Bomba. In Spain there are three areas where this type of rice is grown with a controlled origin. The Ebro Delta in Tarragona province, calasparra in Murcia and the Albufera swamp south of Valencia. This type of rice is suitable for all types of paella, whether meat or fish, vegetables or mixed. It absorbs more water than other types of rice, thus better retaining the flavors of ingredients and other important quality, it keeps cooking very well even if you exceed the recommended cooking time. The grain has a round and white look. It is not very easily found in Italy and is very expensive even in Spain, however in Italy we have risi that are very close to this and can make up for it. So I recommend a parboiled an arborium or a carnaroli. Perfect laughs for our risottos but also good for paella.
A very welcome variant will be to use black rice called Venus. It is a variety of Italian rice that was born at the end of the last century around Vercelli through a cross between an Asian variety of black rice and a variety of the Padana Plain. It certainly turns out to be an exotic and unconventional choice, but it seems the ideal rice for the mixed paella of meat and fish, so much so that even the Spaniards have discovered it and use it.
I wanted to do a try using Basmati rice which is an elongated rice and I found it great for paella for its fragrant and aromatic taste and whose beans remain separate and solid.
Fish paella or paella de marisco
Only fish is used in this type of paella. Mainly shellfish and shellfish hence the name Marismus (mollusk). Mussels, squid, shrimp, langoustines, but also clams, crabs or fish that offers the market, everything goes well for this preparation. In this recipe the rice is flavored not only with saffron but also with paprika. The basic recipe does not include vegetables except tomato garlic and onion, but inserted in the middle of cooking you can put peas and peppers. Instead of the broth in this variety they use the water that comes out of the pot opening of mussels, or the comic of fish or crustaceans that is the cooking bottom of the fish and crustaceans that we use for our paella.
Serve the marisco paella with slices of lemon.
Vegetarian Paella
In this particular paella you use seasonal vegetables, and therefore can vary depending on the period in which you prepare. So peas, cauliflower, carrots, white spanish beans, artichokes, peppers and green beans. But champignon mushrooms or other types and other vegetables are also fine. For the bottom of cooking, onion, garlic, tomatoes and for the aromas, paprika, saffron and parsley. It is a fairly fast preparation and very tasty and healthy.
Paella of Alicante
In this variant you use rabbit and chicken meat that are cut into not very large pieces and browned with a little butter along with the sliced sausage. Set aside and add the garlic cloves and chopped onion to the cooking bottom. When the garlic is golden, remove it and add the tomatoes, chicken and rabbit. Cook the rice for about ten minutes in the heated paella with the oil, uniting the meat broth a little at a time. Add the meat and cook for another 5 minutes. Beat 4 eggs in a bowl with a little salt and pepper and pour over the rice over the heat. Place the slices of sausage on top of the garnish.
Put it in the oven at 200 degrees for about ten minutes and serve hot.
the original Valencian
It is not very easy to find it, you prefer the most complete variants. But initially the Valencian paella was made up of meat, snails and vegetables and not fish as many now prefer. So in addition to rice, chicken, rabbit, snails. White Spanish beans and green beans as vegetables. For the bottom of cooking, always the usual, tomato, onion and garlic. The cooking is the same, only the ingredients change. This is the oldest and most classic Spanish paella.
A voice in the word deserves sangria that even if it is not purely a wine (or more simply a preparation) suitable for our pans, it is the necessary completion to this tasty dish.
So have a good appetite.
