Despite the amount of cooking that we do in the MM household, we fall into rather predictable patterns, and rely on tried and true favorites. If we decide to have a paella, it is almost always a mixed meat and seafood paella that is strongly flavored and packed with chicken, pork, chorizo, shrimp, crabs, mussels, etc. Alternatively, we do an arroz negro or a black paella with seafood and squid ink. Today, I decided to try a lighter seafood paella made with a fish stock rather than chicken stock, but couldn’t resist and added some chorizo as well.
At 10 am this morning, I checked the pantry and found a kilo of paella rice which was purchased from Gourdo’s, then a quick check of the freezer yielded just a half cup of our standard soffrito, not enough for a large pan of paella. No matter, we would improvise. We jumped into the car, headed to the Seaside market in Baclaran, and I managed to purchase 1/2 kilo of medium sized shrimp, 1/2 kilo of tiny clams, 1/2 kilo of diwal (angel wing clams), 1/2 kilo of sliced tanguigue (spanish mackerel), 1.5 kilos of alimango (mud crabs), and 1/2 kilo of pusit (squid). Total cost was roughly PHP1,000 and half of that was the cost of the crabs. Oh, I also bought 1/2 kilo of bisugo or bream to make a fresh fish stock.
Back home by 11 am, we cleaned and cut the bisugo and added it to a stockpot with water, celery, onions, peppercorns, bay leaves and leeks and let that boil for about 20 minutes to make a simple fresh fish stock. Strain and set aside some 11 cups or so of broth. We took out our largest paella pan, put it on a weber grill with raging coals, and added lots of olive oil, some minced oven roasted garlic, half an onion, diced, and three sliced chorizos bilbao. We added some paprika, some sliced sweet bell peppers (yellow, orange and red) and sauteed all of this for a minute or two before adding a kilo of paella rice. Actually, 800 grams would have been sufficient, but what do you do with the 200 grams leftover, so I dumped it all in. Next, I added the half cup of soffrito we had in stock, a tablespoon of tomato paste, then the broth. Add two generous pinches of good saffron, salt and stir until the ingredients are spread relatively evenly on the bottom of the pan. Next place the crabs, fish, shrimp, squid and clams and add a little more salt to taste and some freshly cracked black pepper. Cover the weber and cook for a total of 20 minutes more or less, checking every so often to make sure it is doing okay. The result? A lighter version of our meat and seafood paella. Because of the fish stock, the total effect was not as heavy, though the rice remained well flavored. The paella rice was noticeably better than using arborio (we use arborio when we can’t find real paella rice). The seafood gave off a lot more liquid, so this started out a little soupier than our normal paella, but after sitting under newspaper for 5 minutes or so, the extra liquid was quickly absorbed by the rice. Squeeze a generous slice of lemon and eat heartily. Excellent. :) Oh, total cost was roughly PHP1,700, but this easily fed 10-11 hungry folks. That comes out to just PHP154 per person, not bad for such a seafood laden dish, no?
25 Responses
Your posts on paella tells me that it is not very difficult to make but in my 2 attempts at making paella, I have not been successful at all! Is a paellera pan necessary, MM? I want to try this again.
excep t for black paella, chorizo is a must!
Which paella rice did you use, bomba or sollana?
piktyur pa lang, masarap na.
off topic, any suggestions of hotels in paris?, we’ll be going there this monday and still haven’t found any, getting confused with reading reviews on tripadvisor…hehehehehe……
any suggestions will be greatly appreciated :)
Now, I am sure this was much nicer than the salty paella harang you had in Madrid. Your pan is nice, with an adequate depth; it must be Spanish, but not the common pan. I used to use Calasparra rice, but switched to basmati for health reasons, with satisfactory results for my taste. Basmati seems to cook quicker and more thoroughly, so if I cook stove top on a smaller ring than the particular pan, there are no undercooked edges. I tend to add the mussels and clams towards the end ,burying them in the rice to avoid overcooking as local mussels can get quite tough; the prawns I put on top in the last few minutes, so the meat is succulent. A friend from Ceuta in Spanish North Africa, introduced me to a variation which includes hot sili.
I could talk about paella all day and I appreciate your posts on it.
I’m more bias to a seafood paella than meat paella.
Once used caldareta sauce for this.
Wow You were able to find diwal in the Metro! I thought you could only get them in Roxas city and Ilioilo.
There! There! There! Waking up late on a Sunday morning and looking at this post (I can make out the steam of the paella in those photos!) makes me so friggin’ hungry! Too bad I can’t have a quick fix of paella at Arano in Cebu and there’s not a resto here in Dumaguete that serves paella (or at least, none that I know of) ! In the meantime, I am copying the recipe and will try out anytime this week!
I love paella (and can make pretty mean versions with great soccarat). But I must say I am not too fond of seafood paellas–I’ll eat them, but rarely cook one. At home we much prefer paellas with rabbit, quail, or dove, maybe duck if that’s what came home. We’ll usually throw in green beans, sometimes artichokes or asparagus. And a handful of snails if we have made the effort to acquire fresh snails. Hunting season is approaching none too quickly for us!
kurzhaar, that kind of paella sounds wonderful and quite authentic. If you want to go back further in the history of the dish, I understand they started off by using a type of swamp rat as the main source of protein… hmmm.
What I was told many years (decades) ago was that the original paella was peasant food and so rabbit or snails were the original meat added to rice and perhaps dried beans. Rabbit and snails are free, and don’t need a firearm or hunting dogs to obtain as you can snare a rabbit but not gamebirds. So quail and other gamebirds are maybe less authentic in that regard–nonetheless at least today I think my favourite paella is quail and green beans (with maybe chorizo or chickpeas added). I like artichokes too but find them a bit of a challenge to match with wines. Snail paella is delicious!
I have a food history book somewhere with a reference to rodents used as food–I think it was a kind of muskrat eaten around Valencia (not just in paella). Rabbits, as you probably know, are not rodents. :)
In any case it’s probably accurate to say that seafood paellas were a later development.
Diwal!!!! Nice
With diwal, your paella is alta cocina and can compare well with the best Spanish ones.
edee, sorry, I didn’t get to your query sooner. Hotels in Paris are dicey, we sometimes stay at larger ones in the older part of town, but the smaller bed and breakfasts or smaller hotels are quite nice too. Will leave another message as soon as Mrs. MM is back as she has the names of some places we tried to get into but failed…
Fabulous!!! I’ve always wanted to make paella myself but I simply cannot find the courage :-( I’m such a chicken.
Speaking of rabbits, we have lots of them loitering our campus. The university spends a lot of time and resources trying to get rid of them and it’s amazing how much press they get with all of the animal rights activists going ballistic every time the grounds keepers do a cull. Last time I heard, they will be shipped to Texas, maybe they should just be sent to Valencia to be added to paella instead.
thanks MM, actually we’ve booked already and we’re keeping our fingers crossed, it’s so hard to find a B&B or even hotels with triple rooms, we’re travelling with our 8yr old who’s a bit excited now :) I’ve also taken notes from your paris posts as your barcelona posts were so helpful, if you have any suggestions on places to eat or see and shop, please do tell as i’ll check on your site once we get there, still finishing our packing and by early afternoon , bon jour paris! :)
p.s. list of places to stay is still very much welcome, as i reckon we’ll always be back ……merci beaucoup….
edee, for food, Les Papilles is worth a try. The food halls at Au Bon Marche or large Galleries Lafayette are to die for. Any of the several patisseries I wrote about for macarons, etc. For hotels, Hotel de L’abbaye.
MM,
Can’t wait to dust off the old Weber Grill from the storage area and try to cook Paella instead of using the stove top.
Thanks,
Jr.
I simply envy that you have a paellera!
Jen, small to medium sized paelleras at Gourdo’s or Terry’s is roughly USD15-25 only. It will fit in a large suitcase. :) I also have the big paellera in the photo, perfect for the normal sized Weber grill…
I have made both of MM’s regular paella and paella negra and I have been very successful! Thanks MM! Love the negra with aioli – I didn’t know what to expect the combination of flavors really works out well.
Every Saturday morning, there is a gentleman who flies in seafood from Roxas at the Salcedo Park.
Jen, you can purchase a paellera form Pasquale Bros at 16 Goodrich Rd, Etobicoke M8Z4ZB tel (416)364-7397.