Sometimes we feel like eating some paella but don’t have all of the ingredients of a full blown meat and seafood paella. This is a simpler version, that incorporates whatever ingredietns we had in the house, and it turned out very well. My detailed recipe for a paella a la Marketman is here, and my previous post on the sofrito with tips here is the key to our tomato based paellas. So if you read those two posts, you can fiddle with proportions and make this version here. To start, I sauteed three links of chorizo bilbao that were sliced thinly in several tablespoons of olive oil, then added cubes of pork loin, then some chicken breasts cut into bite sized pieces and some drumsticks and wings. Add some paprika for color and flavor. After the meat was slightly browned, I added 4 cups of arborio rice (no spanish paella rice on hand), then several cups of sofrito and quickly stirred the contents of the paellera. Add a cup or so of leftover white wine and stir vigorously and spread the rice and meat evenly in the pan…
Immediately add roughly 6-7 cups of chicken broth and allow all of this to simmer over the hot coals (oh, I forgot to mention, we only make this over charcoal, not in the oven or on a stovetop). After a few minutes, we added some sliced bottled artichokes, a cup or two of peel small shrimps and let it cook some more. Add a little more broth until a total of roughly 9 cups and let it cook further. We added some sliced grilled red peppers to the top for color, salt and pepper as you cook. Remove from the heat after about 20-25 minutes total of cooking or when it is still quite moist and the rice is soft enough to eat, but al dente. Cover with newspaper and let it steam for another 5 minutes before serving. Surprisingly, all the liquid will be absorbed.
Serve with sliced lime or barring that, lemon and squeeze the lemon over your paella before eating it. This one was delicious, chock full of pork, sausage and chicken, and with a few shrimps and an occasional tangy artichoke. This medium-sized paellera with 4 cups of rice easily served 10. And feel free to experiment by adding other ingredients, but don’t forget the keys to success: a short grain rice, a flavorful sofrito, good olive oil, a rich heady broth, lots of tasty meat or shellfish, a little bit of veggie and there you have it. Hopefully, with practice and a good understanding of the heat generated in your grill, and you will get a nice slightly burned crust at the bottom of the pan, tutong to most of us, socarrat to the Spanish… YUM.
Don’t feel like a tomato based paella, try this Arroz Negro that is also superb!
11 Responses
hi mm! this sounds muy delicioso! i will definitely try it. muchas gracias for this recipe…
Not so far-fetched in a blog such as this is the second prediction. I shall therefore take really good care of myself to ensure that I shall still be around in ten years time so as soon as I finish my two bags of calasparra rice I shall henceforth deviate from my habit of a lifetime and not over-eat too much rich food ha ha. And if I survive ten more years after that, I can look forward to experiencing the pure joy of holding a conversation with a non-judgmental and unprejudiced machine.
Ray Kurzweil has some encouraging predictions:
Within 5 years the exponential progress in nanoengineering will make Solar power cost-competitive with fossil fuels
· Within 10 years we will have a pill that allows us all to eat whatever we feel like and never gain any unwanted weight
· In 15 years, life expectancies will start rising faster than we age
· In about 20 years 100% of our energy will come from clean and renewable sources, and a computer will pass the Turing Test by carrying on a conversation that is indistinguishable from a human’s.
https://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/06/exponential-tec.html
When I lived in the SF Bay area, I use to get all my spanish provisions from “The Spanish Table” (www.spanishtable.com).
I also got my Garcima carbon steel paellara from them
You’re right about how simple it is to make paella, and how you could actually experiment with different ingredients and still come up with an impressive, yummy dish. We took a Spanish family friend to the beach recently and she cooked up what she called Paella ala Cagbalete (named after the island) since she had to make do with what was available there. We just had chicken, squid and shrimp, and a lone crab that she actually caught on the beach. Instead of wine, she used beer. Amazingly, it was delicious!
Just thought I’d share that story to illustrate how creative you could be in preparing paella…;-) looking forward to more mouth-watering recipes from you! cheers!
Thanks for sharing your recipe, i’ll try this on sunday for Father’s Day :-)
gorgeous version of paella!! i never tried adding porkthough..is it okey to mix chicken and shrimps with pork in this paella?? thanks Mm
I love paella particularly paella negro. I first tried paella negro in Barcelona and Canary Islands. I also like arroz valenciana. I wish the Philippines will retain and maintain cooking arroz valenciana. I believe this is the sticky version of paella because everytime I attend special occassions in Laguna, they always serve arroz valenciana using malagkit rice
There is a dish called Bringhe among Tagalog people of paella ingredients with malagkit rice, simmered in coconut milk and coloured with dilao, which is popular at buffet dinners. It is delicious but you must not think of it as paella, as it will spoil your enjoyment of an excellent dish, particulrly as no saffron is used, but instead turmeric(dilaw) gives the yellow colour.Apparently in the southern tagalog areas, there is a dish called Valenciana which is made similarly to paella but uses achuete for colouring, and omits seafood in the ingredients. I have never tried it but can only imagine it is also very nice. The use of malagkit rice reminds me of the “ma chang” among the local Fukien, which is lotus wrapped parcels of malagkit rice with sausage, pork, chicken etc – also very nice. all very nice, but the naming is improtant as our expectations may lesd us to disappointment and rejection of what is really fine cuisine.
Mouthwatering!
Hi! Thanks so much for this post! Do you know where we can find paelleras in different sizes that aren’t so expensive? the ones we’ve seen so far are being sold in la Tienda and they are so huge. Looking for something that serves maybe 4 and 2?
@food_fan
I saw some relatively inexpensive ones at Gourdo’s in Gateway. The one that serves 6 costs around Php500 if I remember it right.