Seafood Paella

My very first homemade paella :)

Paella are hard to come by in Singapore, maybe the lack of Spanish restaurants or even generally in groceries, chorizo and jamon are a rarity. I recently had excellent seafood paella (cooking on a huge paella dish is so irresistible!) at a farmer's market and have since crave for it even more.

I'm quite anal particular about getting every ingredient right and arborio rice just won't do it for me (rightfully so because arborio can't retain too much moisture or it'd burst into a starchy mess). My search was complete when I bagged some Valencia rice from a Spanish restaurant with a tiny retail section. Next would just be a matter of nailing down the recipe. I've been following Jun's blog for a while (remember condensed milk pound cake) and his four-attempts-to-a-successful-paella made me all jittery about my first try, without a paella dish!

After more research (means more clicking on Google), I finally settled for an old recipe from Times, a little nerdy no less ;) Firstly for its recipe list that consists of only seafood ingredients (no chorizo or chicken) and a prelude to homemade fish stock (great discovery!) that I truly believe drew out the most flavour for this wonderful rice dish :)

Moist and flavourful rice stuffed in mussels!

Ingredients

• 1 cup arroz bahía (Spanish round short-grained rice)
• 2 cups fish stock (preferably homemade)
• ½ cup green peas
• 2 tsp paprika
• 15 strands saffron
• 10 clams
• 10 green mussels
• 10 tiger prawns, shelled
• 1 squid, cleaned and sliced in rings
• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 red pepper, thinly sliced
• 1 large ripe tomato, deseeded and cube
• 1 lemon, cut in wedges

Serves 2 -3 (adjust the rice accordingly to serve more)
Adapted from Times UK

Directions

1. Prepare homamade fish stock or dissolve stock cubes to exact cup measurement. While most of the other ingredients are flexible, measurement of stock must be twice of rice
2. Infuse saffron strands in a tablespoon of hot water for 10 minutes
3. In a paella dish (I used a slightly deep cast iron skillet instead), drizzle a tablespoon of olive oil in medium heat and toss in prawns and paprika for a minute
4. Add squid, garlic, tomato, red pepper and give a quick stir for another 2 minutes
5. Pour in rice and coat well with the rest of the ingredients for another 2-3 minutes
6. Add fish stock into the pot and pour in saffron (with its liquid)
7. Push clams and mussels to the bottom of the pan. You'll end up with full flavoured rice stuffed in the shells, yum! :)
8. Lastly add peas in the mix and stop stirring
9. Let the pan sit uncovered until all liquid has been absorbed and a slight crust has formed at the bottom of the pan. That's how Peggy insists that paella should be (slightly burnt at the bottom)
10. Take the pan off the heat torest for ten minutes and served with lemon wedges

Thankfully a success on my first try! Erm right Justin? Except I forgot to shell the prawns!

Perfect weekend recipe for friends :)