Paella

Saturday March 15

Had a sudden envie for shrimps and rice and I (Holt) had never done a paella.
The basis for this was the Seafood Paella recipe in Modern Spanish Cooking by Sam and Eddie Hart, the geniuses behind one of our fave restaurants in London, Fino. Barbara had a Platonic paella in Majorca, made with seawater. This ain't that, but it's mighty tasty.

First the broth:
We followed Fino's recipe fairly closely with only a few additions and deviations. The important exception was that they (all la-di-da) strain everything out at the end, while we tend to keep everything in. So
Peel 1/2 lb of shrimp
In a sauce pan, sauté the shells in olive oil till pink. Then add about 1 cup of water and boil to get all the good out of them.
In a stockpot sauté till soft and slightly caramelized
1/2 onion
1/2 fennel
add a couple of
plum tomatoes
(in our case we added a couple of frozen smoked and dried tomatoes) and cook down.
At this point Fino adds 1/2 tsp pimenton della Vera, but since we were adding chorizo later we skipped this step.
Then add a liter of water and the strained shrimp essence, plus
a bay leaf
a sprig or two of thyme
a couple of branches of the fennel.
Since Barbara's Platonic paella contained chicken, we made it a more chicken broth by tossing in
a bag of saved chicken bits (backs, necks, wings).
Cook until the chicken's done and the vedge has rendered up all its goodness.
Fish out the thyme, fennel, and chicken.
Strip the chicken bits for bits of chicken.
That's the broth, now on the paella proper.

Unlike a risotto, the secret of a paella is not to stir it. I approached this technique with a certain trepidation, fearing that the end would be crunchy rice, but the proportions were exactly right.
So in a deep frying pan, sauté in olive oil:
the other half of the onion, diced
a red pepper, ditto,
2 cloves of garlic, ditto, ditto,
lightly salt the vedge.
2 links of chorizo (cut into dice if smoked, into slices if not. The Kroger sausage people had had a very firm smoked Spanish chorizo, but this time it was looser and not dried. I made sure it was the Spanish and not the Mexican stuff, but they seemed to have changed their recipe or procedure.)
When all done, add
200 gr. Arborio rice, and stir to coat in the oil as you would for a risotto.
Then add
1 liter of the stock
a healthy pinch of saffron.
Crank up the heat to a mild boil for 20 minutes.
If it's looking dry add 1 ladle of stock. We did but then needed to boil off a little extra liquid at the very end, so the amounts of 1 liter to 200 gr. rice seem just about perfect.
After 20 minutes, add the shrimp, pushing them down into the rice.
For the final 5 minutes, cover the pan tightly, turn the heat to the lowest.
When we uncovered the pan, even the top rice was perfectly done. The shrimp were nice and firm. It didn't need any extra salt either.
We served it with the lovely Conclass Spanish white (the last bottles on sale at Cork 'n' Bottle).