Sunday Paella

Lazy Sunday - went to the Prahran Market in the morning with The Daddy and Tabitha, then had a couple of friends come over, then had my parents, sister, godfather and godson over for dinner.  I made seafood paella for dinner - my godfather gave me a whopping bit paella pan for Christmas a few years back, and it's always a great meal to make when there's a bit of a crowd.

Here is how I make paella:

9 cups of water

500g clams (vongole) purged of sand (soak in cold water with 2 big pinches of salt for at least 30 minutes)

500g mussels, scrubbed and debearded

2 fillets of firm-fleshed white fish (I used Rockling today) cut into 2 inch pieces

A few tablespoons of flour with a good amount of salt and pepper mixed through

Extra virgin olive oil

1 green capsicum, cored, de-seeded, and cut into 1 inch pieces

500g cuttlefish or squid, cleaned and cut into 1 inch pieces

20 raw head-on large prawns in their shells

2 garlic cloves, finely sliced

5 ripe tomatoes, peeled, de-seeded and finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika

20 - 30 saffron threads, lightly toasted in a dry pan for a couple of minutes, then ground to a powder (rub in a piece of baking paper)

3 cups paella rice (or short-grain rice)

In a medium saucepan, boil 5 cups of water, add clams and a teaspoon of salt.  Reduce heat and simmer, half-covered, for half an hour.  Set aside with clams WITH their water (throw out any that don't open).

Put the mussels in a medium saucepan with a cup of water, bring to boil, simmer, uncovered, until the mussels have opened (about 3-5 minutes).  Throw out any that don't open.  Set aside the mussels with their water.

In a large paella pan (mine is about 60cm or so across), coat the bottom with around 8 tablespoons of oil, and heat.  Dredge the pieces of fish in the seasoned flour, then pan-fry in the oil, turning once, until lightly browned.  Set aside.

Remove any solids in the paella pan, then, in the same oil, add the capsicum and cook over medium heat for about 3 minutes, stirring, until it starts to brown and becomes fragrant.  Add the cuttlefish and cook, about 5 minutes, stirring, and scraping anything that sticks to the pan.  Add the prawns and cook on both sides until pink.

Lower the heat to medium, and add the garlic, tomatoes and 2 pinches of salt and cook, stirring frequently, until the tomatoes have darkened and the mixture is a nice sludgy 'sofrito' paste (abour 10 - 15 minutes).

While this is cooking, strain the broth from the mussels and clams into a jug, adding enough plain water to make up around 8 cups of liquid in total.  

Pull off and discard one side of each clam shell (the side not attached to the clam).  When the sofrito is ready, sprinkle in the paprika and saffron powder, stirring over heat for a minute while the flavours penetrate and meld.  Remove the prawns, set aside with the fish, clams and mussels.

Add the clam water/plain water (8 cups), bring to the boil, and taste for seasoning, adding more salt as needed.  Sprinkle the 3 cups of rice evenly over the paella pan.  With a wooden spoon, check to see that the rice is evenly distributed across the pan.  Do NOT stir again!

Lay the pieces of fish, prawns, mussels and clams over the top (you can do this in a pretty pattern, or just keep it rustic, depending on your mood).  Cook, uncovered, for 8 minutes over high heat, then a further 10 - 15 minutes over medium heat, or until the rice is cooked (still having a fair amount of 'bite', you don't want it too soft).

The paella rice will be fairly dry at the end, and there will be an almost-burnt, crispy dry layer of rice on the bottom - this is the best part!  Remove from the heat, then cover with some paper towels and let rest for 5 minutes.  Squeeze some fresh lemon juice over the top before serving.  When serving, make sure you scrape some of the bottom crispy part into each serving.  

I cannot possibly tell you how good this smells (and tastes) - I had to shoo out a crowd of people from my kitchen, all trying to steal a taste out of the pan while it was cooking.  The smokey, intense paprika and salty seafood smell permeates the whole house.  It is intoxicating.

Here is Tabitha eating a prawn from the paella - it was delicious and spiced and smokey and she ate the whole thing!

My Tips:

• Prepare the mis en plas well before starting cooking - preparing the clams, cutting everything up, cleaning the squid, toasting the saffron etc., can easily take over an hour if you do it at a leisurely pace.  Once everything is prepared and in the bowls ready to go, cooking is dead easy and very straightforward:

 

• My paella pan is far too big for a single burner, so I straddle it across my fish burner and two of the regular burners, turning every now and then to ensure the heat is even.
• Sometimes you need to add a little extra water, if the rice is not yet cooked and there is no liquid left - but just a cup or less of boiling water, sprinkled over, should do it.  And remember paella is dry, not wet like risotto.
• You can mix up the seafoods if you want - just use what looks good at the market.  Sometimes yabbies, bugs, you can even add some browned chicken thigh or rabbit (cook in the same way as the fish).
• You can buy excellent smoked sweet paprika and saffron from Casa Iberica in Collingwood (25 Johnston Street) - and, for that matter, paella pans.  For some reason, people often give me Spanish ingredients as a hostess gift (seriously - it's happened too often to be a coincidence!), so I have a bit of a stash.  This Bomba rice is the shiz:

We had some baklava and assorted similar sweets for dessert:

My friend Ruby came over this afternoon too - she is studying photography part time, and came to take some photos of Tabitha.  Here is one she took - she will send through more in the next few days hopefully:

And here is Ruby holding Marilyn - she went from being very nervous to completely in love, in the space of about a minute!  Now she wants a diamond python too - see, diamonds are a girl's best friend: