Paella is truly a whole meal from one pan, both from a cooking and eating perspective. Once I’d realised how versatile it was, I bought myself an authentic paella pan – not expensive – and it’s given me a huge amount of use and pleasure, but you can use a large, deep frying or sauté pan, too. The trick to it is to soften the onion, pepper and garlic mixture for a very long time until it goes sludgy and sweet. You can do this in advance, and even in larger batches and keep it in the freezer.
Feeds 4 and probably more.
Ingredients
7 tablespoons olive oil
300g uncooked North Atlantic prawns, shells on
150g morcilla (or black pudding), sliced into 1cm rounds
100g cooking chorizo, cut up into small pieces
2 large Spanish onions, finely chopped
1 large red bell pepper, deseeded and finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, squashed under the blade of a knife
250g paella rice
1 heaped teaspoon sweet smoked Spanish paprika
900ml chicken stock (preferably fresh)
500g spinach, washed and drained (you can use defrosted leaf spinach)
1 lemon, cut into wedges
salt and pepper
Method
Put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a paella pan or large, deep frying pan and place over a high heat. Stir-fry the prawns for a few minutes until nearly, but not quite, cooked. Remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. Fry off any watery liquid, then add more olive oil and gently fry the black pudding for a couple of minutes, removing it to a separate plate as carefully as you can (it may fall apart but don’t worry too much).
In the rest of the oil, fry the chorizo for a couple of minutes, then add the onion and bell pepper. You need to fry these, stirring frequently, until they reduce and caramelise – at first on a fairly high heat but after 5 minutes, turn it right down to cook very slowly. It will take longer than you expect and for a while they will seem to steam more than fry, but have faith – they will reduce and sweeten in about 35–40 minutes.
After half an hour, when they look nearly done, add the garlic and continue cooking for another 5–10 minutes until the mixture is really soft and sweet. Add the rice, stir well to coat and sprinkle evenly with the paprika. Season with salt but keep in mind that if you’re using chicken stock from a cube or granules it will be much saltier than fresh. Until this point you can make the dish in advance.
About 25 minutes before you are ready to eat, heat the chicken stock until nearly boiling and let the rice mixture warm through. Lay the black pudding over the top of the rice and pour the hot stock gently into the paella pan. Bring to a gentle bubble and leave it – the rice should not be disturbed from this point on, or it will break down and go mushy.
In the meantime, in a large saucepan, wilt the spinach (if you are using fresh), with just the water drops left on it from washing and a heavy-handed pinch of salt. Squeeze out any water and set aside with the prawns. If using defrosted spinach, skip this step.
Taste the rice after 20 minutes – you want it to be almost cooked but with very little bite left. When it seems just done there should be only a little liquid around the edge of the pan. Switch off the burner. Scatter the prawns and then the spinach over the rice and push down with your fingers – be careful, it’ll be really hot. Cover firmly with a large piece of tin foil and leave to rest for 5 minutes before serving with a segment of lemon.
Joanna Weinberg has written cookery columns for The Times, Red and currently Condé Nast Traveller. She has written two cookbooks, How to Feed Your Friends with Relish and Cooking for Real Life, published by Bloomsbury, and runs Kitchen Table Cookery at The Talbot Inn, Somerset.
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