This afternoon some friends and I decided to make some Paella. A Spanish dish of which there are as many variants as there have been days.
This is a short illustrated tour on how to make my flavour of paella. The pictures are at the bottom.
We'll start with the ingredients. These are quite numerous. This dish serves about 5-6 people depending on how much you eat. One of the most important things is to own a Paella pan. We used a 33cm diameter one for this and it was enough food for the before mentioned 5-6 people.
- 2 chicken legs (with thighs) on the bone.
- 1 pepper
- about 10-12 large shrimp (tiger prawn, gambas)
- 100 gr of bacon
- 2 large onions
- 3 garlic pieces
- 100 gr of peas
- 100 gr of french beans
- 1 tin of canned tomatoes (with juice)
- 400 grams of arborio rice (the same you use to make risotto)
- 2 liters of chicken broth
Olive oil, salt, 1 gr of saffran threads.
The mise-en-place for this dish is quite extensive, we did it like this:
Take the meat off of the chicken legs and slice it in small pieces. Fry them in a large frying pan on high heat. Take them out and put them in a container.
Add some oil to the frying pan and fry the pepper (also sliced into small pieces). Take that out as well and put in the container.
Fry the shrimp just long enough so they look pink on all sides, take them out and keep them on a plate.
Lightly sear the bacon, onion and garlic together and then let them simmer until the onions get a glassy look. At the end raise the heat and add the peas and the small chopped french beans. Add the tomatoes and the juice to the pan as well and let it simmer until most of the fluid is gone. You can squish the tomatoes with a wooden spoon.
Add the saffran to the chicken and pepper and add some salt and pepper in with the vegetables.
Put everything in a cool place.
That's it for the mise-en-place. Now you can continue by making your broth (we used pre-made cubes and some water), keep it cooking.
Add the rice, the chicken, bacon and vegetables to your paella pan. Put it on the fire and heat everything up. Stir it a few times.
Take the pan from the fire and add your broth. Now this is important: add broth till you it fully covers your rice, chicken and vegetables.
Put the pan into a preheated oven on 175 degrees (air). Check on the pan in the oven regularly, you might need to refill some broth so make sure you have enough left over. Taste the rice sometimes to see if it's cooked. 15 minutes before you think the rice will be ready you add the shrimp on top of the pan and let them in the oven for the last 15 minutes.
The rice will take about 30-45 minutes to get fully cooked in the broth in the oven.
Take the paella from the oven and let it sit in a safe place with some newspapers over it for a few minutes before serving.
Put on some plates, some lemons in parts next to it and ready to serve!
Enjoy.
