When I saw the Munchies’s video on Paella, I got a craving. It’s not an uncommon reaction to Youtube cooking videos, but there’s something kind of romantic about cooking a huge ass dish outside on a French street, not worrying about cutting up your vegetables and meats the same size, not dealing with the hassle of measuring cups and cooking at the right heat level, all the while getting plastered with wine with friends. Of course, it didn’t exactly turn out that way in my kitchen. I slaved away at chopping all the ingredients before hand (though my lovely partner helped out with cleaning the mussels), sweated my ass off attempting to cook the food, and didn’t even get drunk off the sparkling wine I opened (Roederer Estate Brut NV from Anderson Valley, CA). The end result for my first paella? Eh… it wasn’t BAD but it wasn’t exactly the greatest. It kinda reminded me of first dishes I made when I started cooking – a lot of adding rice and broth after cooking garlic and onions with a variety of other ingredients. Even after adding expensive saffron and sustainable-sourced seafood broth, the rice was undercooked and the mussels were lost in all the mush. Well – better luck next time. I’ll test the rice a bit better and add a bit of cayenne earlier in the cooking process. I think that would prevent it from being gloppy yet undercooked. Also, are the mussels really necessary? At least the spanish chorizo was delicious!
Recipe (that’s still a work in progress!)
I didn’t really measure out anything so take the amounts with a grain of salt.
- 1 cup paella rice
- 1/2 lb shrimp deveined and peeled
- 1/2 lb mussels
- 1 8oz Spanish chorizo sausage (not the same as Mexican!)
- 4 cloves of garlic minced
- 1 large white onion (I also added 1 large red onion) minced
- 3 stalks of green onion
- 1/2 cup of dry white wine (I used white sparkling wine)
- Whatever veggies you got lying around. I used spinach, mushrooms, frozen peas, and bell peppers
- 1 tbsp of tomato paste
- 1 tsp of saffron threads
- 2 cups of seafood broth
- 1 tsp of cayenne pepper
- Salt & pepper to taste (NOTE: taste for seasoning throughout cooking!)
- Heat a large but slightly deep slanted pan over medium-high heat and sear shrimp for 15-30 seconds per side until some brown spots have formed on the pan and the shrimp. Remove shrimp from pan and reserve.
- Lower to medium heat. Add minced onions and garlic to pan. Stir until fragrant, then add tougher vegetables (like mushrooms and bell peppers)
- Add tomato paste and cook out for 5 minutes or so. Deglaze with white wine
- Add rice and mix to coat grains. Add seafood broth, cayenne, and saffron and stir to combine. Place cleaned mussels around the dish and cover.
- Once mussels have opened, remove. Continue cooking over medium heat until rice is cooked (around 20 minutes)
- Remove shells from mussels and reserve. Add soft vegetables (like spinach) to pan to cook.
- Re-add shrimp and mussels to heat through. Taste for seasoning. Serve with sliced green onions to garnish.
Guru of Gluttony 