Cooking Irish can also be found at Pinterest and PETITCHEF.
[Image courtesy of I AM FOOD BLOG.COM until I make this again and replace with my own image.]
The best paella I ever tasted was in the Canary Islands. In another post [Irish Seafood Pot Pie] I wrote about the islands as a popular European vacation destination. Seafood was plentiful and fresh so this dish was often served in the many restaurants along the beaches and in the cities. This is the best recipe I have found for paella with some alteration to match the entrée served so many years ago while I was on holiday with my children Erin and Eli off the coast of Africa near Morocco.
My son Eli Zachary and I in the Canary Islands on holiday during the Christmas season of 1985. We were on our way to dinner on a beautiful warm evening. I still remember the light warm breeze and the feel, look, and smell of the night. Some memories stay with one a lifetime. I guess that is of what life is made. [Note the "big hair" of the 80s!]
Eli and Erin near the orange grove in the Canary Islands.
Before the recipe, I want to include an article on paella--and more specifically--what it is not by Erica Marcus.
"In the pantheon of great international party dishes, you'd be hard-pressed to find one more misunderstood than paella.
Here's what paella is not: It is not a yellow rice casserole. It is not a repository for all manner of meats and vegetables. It is not the Spanish national dish.
What paella is is a method of cooking rice, native to Valencia on Spain's eastern coast, that involves sautéing ingredients in olive oil in a wide, shallow pan, adding rice and liquid and then cooking, uncovered and with a minimum of stirring, until the rice is just tender.
Penelope Casas, an authority on Spanish food (and the author of many cookbooks), explained that the name refers to the pan in which paella is cooked. "The paella--the pan--is wide and shallow," she said. "It is made from carbon steel, it heats up quickly, and over time it discolors and gets ugly-looking." (In other words, don't spend your money on a $200 paella pan; you can get the real thing for about $40.)
In Valencia, Casas said, there are restaurants devoted to making paella. Some make the dish in their kitchens, others use a specially-made propane burner-on-a-tripod, still others cook paella in the most traditional way: over an open wood fire.
In her definitive book Paella! Spectacular Rice Dishes From Spain (Henry Holt), Casas adapts traditional recipes for the American home cook. And she is bullish that a true paella requires nothing that can't be easily obtained in most supermarkets. "The only indispensable ingredients are rice, water and olive oil," she writes. "Everything else is the subject of endless debates and discussions by Spaniards."
When Casas published Paella in 1999, short-grain Spanish rice was hard to find on U.S. shores. But the recent push by Spain to introduce its foods to Americans has brought many more imported products into specialty stores. Optimally, Casas would have us use the highest-quality Spanish short-grain rice, called Bomba, for paella. But she has also made entirely creditable--if unusually creamy--paellas with Italian Arborio rice; she particularly likes Beretta's Superfino brand.
The yellow color of some paellas comes from saffron, but Casas said that it is really a supporting player most of the time. Still, it's worth seeking out high-quality, authentic Spanish "thread" saffron that hasn't been pulverized into an orange powder. Ditto Spanish paprika--pimenton--which has a haunting, smoky quality all its own.
Casas labors mightily to combat the notion, widely held by Americans, that "paella is a random assortment of seafood, meat and vegetables." Even in Valencia, she said, restaurants now serve such " mixed" paellas "because the tourists want them," but the Valencians don't really approve of them. "By mixing, you detract from the integrity of the main ingredients," she said.
On the other hand, Valencia boasts an almost infinite variety of paellas, more than 60 of which Casas presents in her book. "Of course, there's a tremendous variety," she says. "Where paella comes from, they eat it every day."
Now that we know what paella is and what it is not--can you tell I was an English instructor?--I want to add my two cents or really just my personal preferences. I like the saffron, and I like seafood and sausage. So the recipe I have included here contains that and, of course, the baby octopus that we had in Gran Canaria. I never told Erin she was eating octopus almost daily for two weeks until months later.
This is a basic recipe of Tyler Florence that I have tweaked quite a bit to make it more like the paella of years ago. It really is not difficult to make. And it is really so good. Is it really paella in the traditional sense? No, but in the modern American menu, it is. Don't tell your friends from Spain. Many paella recipes call for peas. Many traditional recipes are cooked over wood fires. You also can substitute what you like: oysters, mussels, etc.
Irish Paella
Ingredients:
Spice mix for chicken [recipe included]
3 pounds of boneless chicken breasts or thighs
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
6 Spanish chorizo sausages, thickly sliced
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1 Spanish onion, diced
1 large green pepper, diced
4 garlic cloves, crushed
Bunch flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped, reserve some for garnish
1 (15-ounce) can whole tomatoes, drained and hand-crushed
4 cups short grain Spanish rice
6 cups water or chicken broth, warm
Generous pinch saffron threads
1 dozen littleneck clams, scrubbed
1 pound jumbo shrimp, peeled and de-veined
2 lobster tails
1 pound of baby octopus, cut into rings
12 sea scallops
Lemon wedges
Special equipment:
Large paella pan or wide shallow skillet
Preparation:
Rub the spice mix all over the chicken and marinate chicken for 1 hour in the refrigerator. Heat oil in a paella pan over medium-high heat. Sauté the chorizo until browned, remove, and reserve. Add chicken and brown on all sides, turning with tongs. Add salt and freshly ground pepper. Remove from pan and reserve.
In the same pan, make a sofrito by sautéing the onions, garlic, green pepper, and parsley. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes on a medium heat. Then, add tomatoes and cook until the mixture caramelizes a bit and the flavors meld. Fold in the rice and stir-fry to coat the grains. Pour in water and simmer for 10 minutes, gently moving the pan around so the rice cooks evenly and absorbs the liquid. Add chicken, chorizo, and saffron. Add the clams and shrimp, tucking them into the rice. The shrimp will take about 8 minutes to cook. Give the paella a good shake and let it simmer, without stirring, until the rice is al dente, for about 15 minutes. During the last 5 minutes of cooking, when the rice is filling the pan, add the lobster tails and octopus. When the paella is cooked, and the rice looks fluffy and moist, turn the heat up for 40 seconds until you can smell the rice toast at the bottom. Then it's perfect. The ideal paella has this toasted rice bottom called socarrat.
Remove from heat and rest for 5 minutes. Garnish with parsley and lemon wedges.
