Renegade Paella
I was cooking paella at home long before I had ever set foot in Spain…which perhaps might not bode well for authenticity.
My parents took a trip to Spain during the 1990s, and returned home marveling about many things, but what I remember repeated most was the late hour which the Spaniards ate (“Midnight! Can you believe?!”) and the paella, a rice dish served with fresh seafood – all intact with the heads on, which freaked my dad out.
When I moved to Seattle, my parents discovered the Spanish Table restaurant, and shortly after, a paella pan was awaiting me under the Christmas tree. I have never eaten paella before, so you could imagine I had no idea what it was supposed to look or taste like…and the Spanish Table cookbook that came with it had no pictures and a few confusing quirks in the recipes. But over the years, I continued to follow the basics of that recipe, tweaking things to our liking.
My parents love to cook, so naturally on our trip to Spain last year, we signed up for a paella class. I have never use the AirBnB experiences platform before, but after struggling a bit to find exactly what we wanted, I landed on an AirBnB experience cooking paella in the “secret garden” of a Barcelona native, conveniently located right across the street from Park Guell. It was a great location, making for a nice morning to stroll through the park and enjoy Gaudi architecture, then cross the street to the house and it’s secret garden for lunch. It was a small group affair, with one family and two other couples participating in the cooking class outdoors in host Sara’s backyard.
The class made a meat-based paella as well as a seafood paella. Which is pretty much exactly where everything seem to deviate from what I knew about cooking paella. It seems that in the United States, paella is always served with chorizo, seafood, and perhaps some chicken thrown in. Apparently per Barcelona rules, this is never the case chorizo is never used – instead we used rabbit – And Sara instructed us that meat is never combined with seafood in the same paella. Oops. Yes I’ve been doing this wrong my entire life. She stated that the Frito, the savory bass, was something that took a long time to make and if done correctly, should provide all the flavor base needed, for which apparently chorizo is sometimes substituted. She even suggested that given the amount of time required to make a proper Sofrito, to make plenty in advance and freeze it. It took almost an hour for her to gently cook the onions, garlic, tomato base and spices down to a thick paste. Don’t worry, we were kept plenty busy sampling delicious Iberico jamon, cheese, and wine (and we learned from her, as with some of our other guides, to save a little money by buying the shoulder rather than the hind leg of the iberico pig if one wishes to purchase jamon at home).
Seasoning was also used differently, typically I had always made paella with both paprika and saffron, and again there was division here: saffron was meant for the seafood paella, paprika for the meat based version.
As I later read, paella was traditionally a Valencia dish of the poor, where chicken rabbit, snails, beans and whatever was available were cooked with rice. Ask 100 Spaniards for their paella recipe, and you will probably get 100 different answers…and all will be divine, I bet. The final products of Sara’s recipes were delicious, and well worth the effort.
Renegade Paella Recipe
I have no family paella recipe, hence the renegade name for this paella, but it is a recipe I love, and one we make over and over with friends. It is based on the Spanish Table recipe for a paella mixta, so in theory it does have an authentic base, with modifications based on what we like. Add what you like, and use what looks fresh. The ingredient amounts are listed per person.
Ingredients – per person:
- 1/8 cup white wine
- 5 saffron threads
- 1/2 to 1 piece chicken or rabbit (optional – we often omit)
- 1/4 cup yellow onion, diced or grated
- 1 garlic clove
- 1/4 lb fresh chorizo (remove from casing if in sausage form)
- 1/2 tsp sweet pimenton (Spanish paprika)
- 1/4 cup uncooked risotto, or bomba rice
- 1/2 cup homemade chicken stock*
- 1/2 roma tomato, grated (discarding skin)
- 1/4 cup (approx) red piquillo peppers or roasted red bell peppers
- 2-3 frozen or jarred artichoke hearts
- 1/8 cup frozen peas, or consider green beans
- 2 shrimp or prawns, heads/shells on for authenticity
- 2-4 clams or mussels
- Lemon wedges, for garnish
- Minced parsley, for garnish
Cooking instructions:
- Warm saffron and wine in a small pan; as soon it starts to simmer, remove from heat (do not boil).
- In a paella pan or large shallow cast iron skillet over medium heat, cook the chorizo over moderate heat in a little olive oil, breaking it up with a spoon, until some of the fat is rendered and the chorizo is browned, 5-8 minutes.
- Add chicken, if using, cook until browned and juices run clear.
- Add the onion and garlic and cook over low heat, stirring, until softened and just beginning to brown, 8-10 minutes (for a more authentic sofrito remove meat and set aside, then cook onions and garlic much longer over low heat, 20-30 minutes).
- Stir in the rice and pimenton and stir until rice is coated with oil, about 1-2 minutes.
- Stir in the tomatoes, saffron with wine and stock. Season with salt and pepper, turn up the heat, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. You can gently move ingredients around using a wooden spoon if needed. (If the pan is overflowing, as min usually is, you can remove the chicken and add it back towards the end). If your paella pan is large, you may need to use several burners and rotate the pan periodically so it cooks evenly).
- Add vegetables, and simmer another 5 minutes without stirring .
- Add seafood on top. Simmer another 5-10 minutes without stirring (except to rotate shrimp so they cook evenly), until the rice is al dente (tender but firm to the bite – not mushy!) and the liquid is absorbed. The goal of not stirring is for the paella to develop a socarrat, or caramelized layer on the bottom. If it looks like it is too dry or burning to the pan, add more stock.
- If your pan is too full, consider steaming the clams/mussels in a separate pan and add them at the end once they are cooked and the shells open.
- Let the paella dormir, or rest for 10 to 15 minutes, covered with foil (in Spain, a newspaper is often used – as long as it isn’t the sports section with the soccer scores).
- Garnish with lemon and parsley.
*Homemade chicken stock: if you don’t already make homemade stock, you absolutely should – the taste is far better than anything store bought, and since it can essentially be made from trimmings and scraps, it doesn’t cost you anything but a little time. Start a stock scrap bag by labeling a 1 gallon Ziplock back and placing it in your freezer. Add to it any chicken skins and carcasses, onion trimmings, leek tops, carrot trimmings, and those last few sad looking stalks of celery sitting in your fridge. Once the bag is full and you are ready to make stock, dump the frozen contents into a crock pot and cover with water, filling up to 1-2″ from the top of the crock pot. Add a couple bay leafs, and turn the crock pot on low. Leave it to cook on low all day (or overnight). Strain, and you will have delicious homemade stock ready to go!
