CELEBRATE WORLD PAELLA DAY!

 

Rustic, València-style paella.

Get out the paella pan! Heat the olive oil and make a sofrito. Stir in the rice. Will you add chicken or shrimp? Some beans or artichokes? For World Paella Day (September 20), the choice is yours. While the celebration started in València, the home of paella, it has turned into a world-wide affair.

Here are some paella recipes to get you started (click on the titles to link to recipes).

Start by frying the meat and vegetables to build flavor.

Rustic València Paella (pictured above). Here are ingredients and instructions for a fairly authentic Valencian style paella (minus the traditional snails). I tell you what kind of rice to use (no, don't wash it first!) and how to cook it, starting with the all-important sofrito (pictured at left), the frying of meat and vegetables.  

Paella with chicken and seafood.

Paella with Chicken and Seafood. (Paella con Pollo y Mariscos). If you want a showy paella chock full of chicken, shrimp and mussels, here's a classic recipe. This was prepared by guests at a private cooking class in my kitchen.  In Spain, home cooks often use powdered artificial yellow coloring to attain rice with that bright, sunny yellow color.  Real saffron gives inimitable aroma and flavor to the rice, but its yellow coloring is subtle. 

It's all about the rice! Paella with intense flavor.

Rice with Shrimp in Paella (Arroz con Gambas). This version is for purists, those who say, "it's all about the rice." It's not really paella, but simply intensely-flavored rice, without the showy garnishes and with virtually no protein! The instructions tell you how to build flavor with a seafood stock, a slow-cooked sofrito, and, finally, the cooking of the rice and creation of the socarrat, the crispy bottom. This version is finished in the oven, a process that gives the rice that every-grain-separate effect.

Outdoor paella for family and friends.

Family-Style Paella. In Andalusia, where I live, this is an authentic paella—although with clams and shrimp, and no beans, it's not like Valencian paella. This is paella of the domingueros, the Sunday gathering of family and friends at a choza, a rustic country farmhouse. Depending on the season, the paella might include fava beans, peas, artichokes, tomatoes or peppers picked from the huerta, kitchen garden.

Paella rice with cockles, peas.

Rice with Clams (Arroz con Almejas). Some paellas are truly baroque extravaganzas, with a sumptuous assortment of everything from sea, land and sky. Others, such as this dish of rice with clams (cockles), show an almost Zen-like simplicity.  “Un arroz”—“a rice”—is the name for such a rice dish.  'Un arroz' is a rice dish cooked by Mamá in the kitchen, whereas, 'una paella' is a grand event, cooked outdoors by guys. 

Paella recipe in FLAVORS OF AL-ANDALUS

Vegetable Paella with Picada Topping (Arroz de Verduras). This recipe appears in my latest cookbook, FLAVORS OF AL-ANDALUS, The Culinary Legacy of Spain, which features recipes with roots in Moorish Spain. The Arabs introduced the cultivation of rice in Spain, but did they invent paella? Perhaps. We know that rice dishes of that era, before modern milling, were more like porridge, sweet or savory, made with pounded grains. Some were made with whole grains combined with meat and vegetables--not unlike paella today. The sofrito for this paella does not contain tomatoes, a vegetable from the New World, unknown in Moorish times. 

I make this all-vegetable paella when I have guests of several persuasions and serve it with a selection of dishes on the side—sautéed shrimp, clams, fried chicken nuggets, squid rings, garlicky chickpeas—as well as alioli garlic mayonnaise. Each person can garnish the paella to suit herself. It may not be authentic, but it makes a festive party dish.

Vegetarian paella with brown rice.

Vegetarian Brown Rice Paella (Paella Vegetariana con Arroz Integral). Authentic paella  is not loaded with protein ingredients—they're present to flavor the rice. This version is without meat, poultry, or seafood. 

I use whole grain brown rice (medium-short grain "round" rice) to boost the protein. I make a vegetarian stock with kelp. Full of flavor, this paella is perfect for a meatless Sunday lunch. Lunch, because the Valencianos, inventors of paella, say you never, ever, eat paella at night! But, that’s your call.

No bones: paella parellada

Boneless Paella (Paella Parellada). The recipe for paella Parellada was supposedly invented in Barcelona in the 19th century for a finicky diner (his surname was Parellada) who didn’t want to mess with fish spines, shrimp shells and chicken bones. It’s a paella mixta, mixed paella, because it includes meat (chicken and sausage), fish (monkfish) and shellfish (shrimp, cuttlefish and mussels). You can use all of these ingredients or pick and choose among them, according to availability, tastes and prep time. 

Dare to add sausage to paella! But, chard?

Paella, My Way (Paella a Mi Estilo). Supposedly, for World Paella Day,  Valencianos grant you an indulgence for adding extraneous ingredients, even sausage, to paella. Mine includes chorizo and red chard along with more typical rabbit.

Seafood Paella with Alioli Garlic Mayonnaise (Arroz al Marinero). What I make when my pescatarian friends are coming for dinner: paella with chunks of monkfish, cuttlefish, and shrimp. I serve it with a garlicky mayonnaise embellished with seaweed. 

An impostor! No rice in this paella.

Low-Carb Paella with Cauliflower "Rice." 

Packed with flavor, this rendition of paella has chicken, chorizo, squid, shrimp, mussels, and artichokes. But no rice. Kernels of cauliflower, flavored with saffron, take the place of rice. It may be an impostor as paella, which, after all, is a rice dish, but it's perhaps the world's best cauliflower!

😉

Black rice.

Black Rice with Squid and Shellfish (Arroz Negro con Mariscos). Unlike the classic Valencian paella, tinged with saffron, this version from Alicante is black with squid ink! Also heretical, as I've included chorizo. So, it's not really paella, it's arroz negro. But I've made it in a paella pan, with Valencian rice, so it's a grand way to celebrate World Paella Day.

Not paella! Baked rice with a crust on top.

Rice with Sausages (Arroz con Costra). This is not paella! Valencia paella has big butter beans, flat green beans, chicken and/or rabbit and/or duck, and snails. Snails! No sausage. But, Valencia has hundreds of other rice dishes. Some of those do contain sausage! Just don’t call them paella!

This one comes from Alicante, where rice is also grown. It’s called arroz con costra, rice with a “crust,” because it’s finished in the oven with a topping of beaten eggs. It can contain two or more types of sausage. 

About Spanish rice. Spanish rice, the kind used for paella, is a round-grained, medium-short variety. Senia, Bahía and Bomba are some of the varietals. (Some have denominación de origen, such as Valencia and Calasparra.) Spanish rice has a white perla (pearl), where the starch is concentrated. Its great virtue is as a flavor conductor, soaking up the savory juices with which the rice cooks—olive oil sofrito, chicken, rabbit or seafood,  saffron. Spanish rice is similar to Italian varieties used for risotto. But the cooking method is totally different. Risotto is stirred to develop the creamy starch. Paella rice, cooked “dry,” is never stirred, as stirring breaks up the starch kernel. 

***   ***   ***

Twelve finalists from four continents will compete for the PAELLA WORLD CUP. The event takes place in València starting at 10 am CET (European Daylight Savings), tomorrow, Sunday, September 20. Live streaming at WORLD PAELLA DAY .

Quite a few rice dishes can trace their roots to Moorish Spain. Besides the Vegetable Paella mentioned above, this cookbook, FLAVORS OF AL-ANDALUS, has two other traditional rice dishes--Country-Style Rice in Cazuela and Baked Rice with Lamb and Egg Topping--as well as a dessert, Creamy Rice Pudding. See below for where to order the book.
 

This cookbook explores the fascinating story of the deep and lasting influences that Islamic culture has left on modern Spanish cooking. 

Author and Spanish cooking expert Janet Mendel tells the story of the Moorish influence on Spanish cooking through 120 recipes and photographs for modern-day dishes, from salads and vegetables to fish, poultry and meat to sweets and pastries, that trace their heritage to foods served in medieval times.  (Hippocrene Books)    

 Order on IndiePubs (USA) 

Use PROMO CODE HIPPOCRENE40 for 40% off on all Hippocrene titles at IndiePubs online bookstore.

***

Order on amazon (USA)

Order on amazon.es  (Spain)

Order on amazon.co.uk (UK)

Order on amazon.com.au (Australia)

(If you order on Amazon, please give my book a review!)

***

Order from Kitchen Arts & Letters

Order on ark.no (Norway)

PAELLA: BUILDING FLAVOR

 

Arroz de carabineros. (Photo: Josh Elliott)

I´ve eaten a lot of paellas in my time, from the classic València version, with rabbit and snails, cooked on a wood fire in the rice fields of the Albufera, to a rustic Andalusian campo one where we picked the fava beans and peas from the nearby huerta to add to the rice with chicken and shrimp. I’ve made my share of paellas too, some pretty good.  

But the best paella rice I’ve ever eaten was at a beach restaurant on the Costa del Sol, a glorified chiringuito. We ordered arroz de carabineros, rice cooked in paella (the typical flat pan is called “paella” as is the rice cooked in it) with jumbo red shrimp. It contained almost no protein matter. The shrimp had been reduced to essence giving the perfectly cooked rice intense flavor. The arroz was served topped with a few pieces of the barely cooked carabineros plus their heads, for sucking. No baroque garnishes. No sauce. No lemons. Arroz in its purest form.

I vowed to try to make rice that good. Because it’s World Paella Day (September 20), today I took up the challenge. 

My arroz--rice in paella with shrimp. Flavor is fantastic, texture pretty good. I served cosas, accompaniments, as side dishes. 

What I learned about building flavor can be applied to any rice cooked in paella, including more elaborate ones with chicken, squid, clams, shrimp, artichokes, beans, etc. There are three steps—a sofrito, the foundation for building flavor; a fish/shellfish stock, and the cooking of the rice. 

Sofrito, first step in building flavor.

Sofrito 

This is where flavor begins so make the sofrito as intense as possible. If possible, cook shrimp heads, small crabs, squid bits, etc., with the vegetables, puré the sofrito, shells and all, then push the thick sauce through a fine sieve. Lacking crustaceans, add a few canned anchovies to contribute umami to the basic sauce. This recipe makes enough sofrito for three or four paellas. It can be prepared in advance of cooking the rice and refrigerated or stored in the freezer.

Makes about 2 ¼ cups sofrito.

2 ¼ pounds ripe tomatoes

Olive oil

2 cups chopped onions

½ to 1 cup chopped green peppers

4 cloves chopped garlic

¼ cup white wine

2-3 anchovy fillets, chopped (optional)

2 teaspoons smoked pimentón (paprika)

Sprig of thyme

1 bay leaf

Sprig of parsley

1 teaspoon salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Heat oven to 400ºF.

Place the tomatoes on a rimmed sheet pan, drizzle them with oil and roast them until very soft, about 30 minutes. (Alternatively, drop the tomatoes in a pot of boiling water until the skins begin to split. Drain.) When tomatoes are cool enough to handle, cut out cores and slip off the skins. You should have approximately 3 cups of tomatoes.

Heat ¼ cup of oil in a pan. Sauté the onions on medium-high until they begin to brown around the edges, 5 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons of water and continue sautéing until the water cooks away and onions begin to sizzle again. Add the peppers and garlic and sauté 5 minutes more. Add the anchovies, if using. Add the wine and cook 1 minute to cook off the alcohol. 

Use kitchen scissors to cut the tomatoes into pieces. Add them to the pan with the thyme, bay, parsley, salt and pepper. Fry the tomatoes on high heat 2 minutes. Lower the heat and cook the sofrito, covered, 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover the pan and cook 10 to 15 minutes more until the sofrito is quite thick. Discard the bay leaf and parsley.

Puré the sofrito with a hand-held blender. Set aside ¾ cup of sofrito for use in the paella. Divide the remainder in half and store in the refrigerator or freezer for future use.

Fish Stock

Caldo de Pescado

Fish head for the stock pot.

Along with sofrito, a flavorful fish stock is essential for this rice dish. This can be freely varied, depending on what shellfish and fish trimmings are available. I lucked out, my local fish vendor gave me a whole mero (grouper) head that was lurking in her deep freeze. I made the stock with just the head, no shrimp shells. You can also use clam broth or store-bought stock. Use wine, lemon, herbs, aromatics and sufficient salt. Reduce the stock somewhat so that it’s a powerful cooking medium for the rice. Here’s a basic recipe for Fish Stock.

Rice with Shrimp in Paella

Arroz al Marinero

Unlike traditional paella, this arroz starts on top of the stove and is finished in the oven. If you want socarrat, the crunchy rice on the bottom, you will need to return the pan to the stove-top after the oven.

Size matters. I used a 34-centimeter (13.3-inches) paella pan for 2 cups of rice (400 grams/ 14 ounces), serving 6. This size fits on a large burner of an induction stove and into a normal oven. The cooked rice reached a depth of 1 ½ inches. The restaurant version was made in a similar size pan, but with half the quantity of rice and liquid, changing the timing, the texture of the rice and the yield. I’ll try that method next time, using a thinner layer of rice for the same pan diameter, and see how it changes the rice. 

Use a medium-short grain rice, sometimes called “round rice,” for paella. València varieties include Bahia, Senia, Marisma and Bomba. They are similar to Italian risotto rice, but, unlike risotto, paella rice is never stirred during cooking. 

Serves 6.

1 pound heads-on shrimp

¼ cup olive oil + additional if needed

¾ cup sofrito

½ teaspoon saffron threads

2 cups medium-short-grain rice

4 ½ cup fish or shellfish stock, heated (see note below)

Salt if needed

Finely chopped parsley

Cooked romano green beans (optional)

Alioli garlic sauce to accompany (recipe follows)

Shell the shrimp. Save the heads (clip off the antennae) and tails in a covered container. Save the shrimp bodies in another container. Refrigerate them until ready to cook.

Heat the oil in a skillet and add 1 cup (or more) of shrimp heads and tails. Fry them until they start to brown, crushing the shells with a wooden paddle to extract all the flavorful juices. Remove the pan from the heat, tip it so that the oil drains to one side and scoop out the shells and discard them. (If you do this step in advance of preparing the rice, the fried shrimp heads can be added to the fish trimmings to make the stock.)

Preheat oven to 425ºF.

Taste the cooking liquid for salt. 

Place the shrimp oil in the paella pan. Add additional oil to make 2 tablespoons. Heat on medium and stir in the sofrito. Cook it until it begins to darken slightly. Sprinkle the saffron into the pan. Add the rice and mix it until coated with the sofrito.

Bring the stock to a full boil and carefully pour it into the rice. Stir thoroughly. Taste the liquid and add more salt as needed. 

Cook the rice on medium-high for 5 minutes.

Very carefully transfer the rice to the oven for 10 minutes. 

While rice is in the oven, sauté the shrimp bodies in the skillet just until they turn pink. Remove from pan and sprinkle them with chopped parsley.

Taste the rice. It should be al-dente tender, with just a little kernel of resistance in the center. Remove the pan from the oven. (If you want socarrat, place the pan on medium-high heat for 2 to 3 minutes.) Scatter some of the shrimp on top. Scatter the beans, if using, on the surface. Let the rice set at least 5 minutes before serving.

Lettuce hearts with garlic.

How to serve paella rice. Arroz might be served in its pristine glory, as a primer plato, a starter, to be followed by a main  course of fish, meat or chicken. Or it can be preceded by an assortment of salads and shellfish para picar, to be shared amongst diners at the table. 

I chose to accompany the rice with side dishes to be eaten alongside the rice— sautéed shrimp, fried fillets of gallineta, red rockfish; tiny calamaritos; green beans, sliced tomatoes, and lettuce hearts with fried garlic, piquillo peppers and serrano ham. And, why not? a garlicky alioli sauce. 

Rice is minimally garnished, with side dishes.

Garlic Sauce

Alioli

This is not a true alioli, which is made with only crushed garlic and olive oil. It’s a simple blender mayonnaise with garlic added. Use an immersion blender with a narrow container. (This recipe calls for raw egg.)

1 medium egg, room temperature

½ teaspoon smoked pimentón (paprika)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 clove garlic

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup extra virgin olive oil

Wash the egg. Break it into the blender container. Add the pimentón, lemon juice, garlic and salt. Add the oil. Insert the blender blade to the bottom of the container and run the blender on high speed without lifting it until the egg and oil thicken. Then lift the blade to incorporate any oil on the top and move the blender up and down briefly until it is completely incorporated. If desired, thin the alioli with a little warm water. 

Store the sauce refrigerated and use within 3 days.

Finalists in the World Paella Day competition, which takes place annually on September 20 (time of rice harvest) in València with participants from all over the globe, came from Puerto Rico, Colombia, Japan, Romania, Mexico and China. The winner was Joe Padilla from Puerto Rico.

Where we ate the superb rice: Parador Playa, Benalmadena Costa (Málaga).

Where to get all kinds and sizes of paella pans in the U.S.: La Tienda.

PAELLA—BREAKING ALL THE RULES

 

Black rice--like paella, but of a different color. 

World Paella Day is coming ‘round again (Tuesday, September 20), a grand occasion to get out the paella pans. But instead of the classic Valencia paella, golden with saffron, I am making black paella, using squid ink to color the rice. Also heretical, I’m using chorizo—forbidden to true believers. OK, so my rice dish is not really paella, it’s arroz negro. But, I’m making it in a paella pan with true Valencia paella rice, so I figure it’s acceptable for World Paella Day.

Arroz negro, a specialty of Alicante, is as traditional as paella is in Valencia. Like paella, it starts with a sofrito to which cuttlefish and shrimp are typically added. No, it wouldn’t include chorizo. 

I totally “get it,” that paella is about the flavorful rice, not the add-ins. You’re not overcooking the shrimp, you’re flavoring the rice. Nevertheless, I decided to save the delicate fresh shrimp as a topping for the rice instead of cooking with them. I used the shells and fish trimmings to make a flavorful seafood stock.

Medium-short grain rice.

About Spanish rice. Paella rice is a round, medium-short variety (usually Sénia, Bahía or Bomba). It has a white perla (pearl) where the starch is concentrated. Its great virtue is as a flavor conductor, soaking up the savory juices with which the rice cooks—olive oil sofrito; chicken, rabbit or seafood; saffron. Paella rice (often called “Valencian,” because it is grown there) is similar to Italian rice varieties used for risotto. But the cooking method is totally different. Risotto is stirred to develop the creamy starch. Paella rice, cooked “dry,” is never stirred, as stirring would break up the starch kernel.

My local fish vendor didn’t have cuttlefish, so I bought potón, thick rings of giant squid. Cooked with the sofrito and rice, about 20 minutes, they were very tender. The chorizo added flavor, making a mar y tierra (surf and turf) rice. (Pescatarians can omit the chorizo.) Black rice is usually served with alioli, garlic mayonnaise. I chose to use the shrimp as a topping and roasted peppers as a garnish, so I omitted the alioli.  

Black Rice, like paella, although it’s not loaded with protein material, can be served as a main dish if preceded by hors d’oeuvres, salad or a starter. It also makes a dramatic starter. Instead of bringing the paella pan to the table, serve the rice and its garnishes already plated. Black rice makes a good side for a plate of grilled jumbo shrimp or other shellfish.

Top the rice with sizzling garlic shrimp.

Or, plate the rice and serve with bright peppers as garnish and topped with shrimp.

Shrimp with garlic and parsley create a sauce for the rice.

Black Rice with Garlic Shrimp

Arroz Negro con Gambas al Ajillo

If you use store-bought fish stock, you may not need to salt the rice. Taste the liquid in the pan and add additional salt as needed. (A recipe for seafood stock is here.)

Spoonful of squid ink.

Frozen squid or cuttlefish ink (tinta de calamar) in small packets (sobres) can usually be found where frozen fish is sold. I also have found a pasteurized version in jars at some fish markets. The ink, a thick gel, is also widely used to make black pasta and black breads (hamburger buns, for example). 

How much ink to use? Start with 1 tablespoon for the given amount of rice. I added another spoonful, because I wanted it really black. Stir the ink into some of the cooking liquid before adding it to the pan. Fresh (never frozen) squid have usable ink sacs. But, it takes quite a few of them to make enough ink to color the rice. 

Serves 4-6.

Thick rings of potón, giant squid.

12 ounces cleaned squid 

3 tablespoons olive oil

3 ounces chorizo, diced

¾ cup chopped onions

½ cup chopped green pepper

1 clove garlic, chopped

½ teaspoon pimentón de la Vera (smoked paprika)

2 medium tomatoes, grated (½ cup pulp)

1 ½ cups València rice

1/3 cup white wine

1-2 tablespoons squid or cuttlefish ink

4 ½ cup fish or shellfish stock, heated

Salt

Pepper

Sautéed red peppers, to serve (recipe follows)

Garlic-fried shrimp, to serve (recipe below)

Sliced lemon, to serve

Cut the tube-shaped squid body into 1-inch pieces. Cut tentacles in half if they are large. Pat the squid dry.

Heat the oil in a paella pan. Fry the diced chorizo. Skim it out and reserve it. Add the pieces of squid and sauté them on moderate heat for 5 minutes. Add the onions, green pepper and garlic. Sauté them until onion is softened, 5 minutes. Stir in the pimentón and mix in well. Add the grated tomatoes. Continue cooking the sofrito 5 minutes.

Add rice to the sofrito in paella pan.

Add the rice and fry it 1 minute. Add the wine and cook off the alcohol. Mix the squid ink in ½ cup of the stock. Stir it into the rice. Add 3 ½ cups of the hot stock. Return the pieces of chorizo to the pan (save a few pieces of chorizo to garnish the top of the rice once cooked). Taste the liquid and add salt to taste. Season with pepper. 

Bring the liquid to a boil, reduce heat slightly so the rice keeps bubbling. Stir well to mix all the ingredients, then try not to stir again. Cook the rice 10 minutes.

Lower heat and add additional stock as needed. Cook until the rice is just tender and liquid is absorbed. Remove the pan from the heat and cover it with foil or a cloth. Allow to rest at least 5 minutes to finish cooking.

Serve the black rice in the pan or plated accompanied by the sautéed red peppers and the garlic shrimp. Garnish with lemon slices.

Sautéed Red Peppers

Pimientos Rojos Salteados

Use canned piquillo peppers, fire-roasted red peppers or roast your own bell peppers for this garnish.

Roasted and peeled red peppers

Olive oil

Slivered onions

Salt and Pepper

2 teaspoons Sherry vinegar

Cut the peppers into thin strips. Heat oil in a small skillet and sauté the peppers with the onions. Season with salt and pepper. Cook until onions are softened, about 8 minutes. Add the vinegar and cook 1 minute longer. Serve hot or room temperature as an accompaniment with the black rice.

Shrimp Sautéed with Garlic

Gambas al Ajillo

This method is slightly different from the tapa-bar version of gambas al ajillo. Served as a topping for the Black Rice, it has lemon juice and chopped parsley added.

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 cloves garlic

1 tiny chile

6 ounces small, peeled shrimp

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon water

1/3 cup finely chopped parsley

Flaky salt

Heat the oil in a small skillet. Slice the cloves of garlic thinly crosswise. Add to the skillet with the chile. Sauté until garlic begins to turn golden. Skim out the chile and discard it. Add the shrimp to the oil, Stir-fry them just until they begin to turn pink. Add the lemon juice and water. Remove the skillet from the heat. Stir in the parsley immediately before serving the shrimp. Sprinkle with flaky salt.

Spoon the shrimp over the black rice in the pan or plated.

More ways to make paella:

Rustic Valencia Paella.

Paella, My Way.

Boneless Paella (Parellada).

Paella "Made in USA".

Paella with Chicken and Seafood.

Rice on the Side (Abanda).

Brown Rice Vegetarian Paella.

Low-Carb Paella.

Not Paella.

Rice with Clams.

Mercado Little Spain in New York City is marking World Paella Day on September 20. Or, get your paella-making kit from their product selection.

HAPPY WORLD PAELLA DAY!

For World Paella Day, my non-traditional paella.

Go on, put some sausage in your paella today. Eat it for supper instead of at midday. Scatter peas on top or add mussels, if you like. València gives you permission to break all the rules. But, just for one day, mind you. 

True València paella has no sausage, no chorizo, no seafood. It’s rice (medium-short grain) cooked with chicken/rabbit/duck plus snails (!), flat green beans and plump butter beans. And it’s only ever consumed in the afternoon, never at night.

But on the web page for World Paella Day, Valencianos declare that, on this day, “we put aside our differences and celebrate the internationality of paella,” a dish of humble Valencian origin that, judging by 8 million web searches on paella per year, makes it the fourth most important dish on the planet. One young man goes so far as to say that, just for today, his mom’s paella is not the best paella in the world.

Chef Jeff Weiss stirs up a traditional paella at Valencian Gold Restaurant. in Las Vegas. Read more about Jeff Weiss here. (Photo by Valencian Gold.)

I couldn’t find snails or duck, anyway. So I was ready for some radical paella moves. I turned for inspiration to a friend, Jeffrey Weiss (chef and author of CHARCUTERÍA--THE SOUL OF SPAIN). Jeff and his partner-in-paella, Paras Shah, recently opened a fast-casual restaurant in Las Vegas, USA, called Valencian Gold, featuring “build your own paella bowl.” Choose chicken, seafood, mushroom-chickpea or mixed grains paella. Add greens, i.e., spinach or rucola! Then choose grilled chicken, lamb, steak or shrimp or, vegan, ratatouille or herb-bean to go with the paella base. Add sauce/dip and salads.

“It’s funny about paella here in the US,” says Jeff. “Folks have varying ideas of what it's ‘supposed’ to be. Whereas, if you ask a Valenciano, paella valenciana is and forever will be rabbit, snails, and a few kinds of beans... and all else is arroz con cosas.

“I’m in the camp that Paella Valenciana has specific ingredients and should be respected for the tradition it comes from. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no room for creativity or paella libre. So for me, as long as the technique of paella cookery is followed then you’ve made paella.”

The technique of paella cookery means real olive oil, real saffron, real paella rice (Bomba or another medium-short grain variety) and sofrito or salmorra or salmorreta, a sauce/base of garlic, ñora peppers and tomatoes that builds flavour.

Because the Valencianos have granted permission to break the rules, I decided to put sausage in my paella plus red chard (green leaves and red stems)! My “secret” ingredient: a spoonful of fat rendered from ibérico pork chops along with the olive oil. The sausage I used was chorizo criollo, a raw pork sausage.

Rabbit and beans are typical in València paella, but sausage and red chard are radical!

Saffron plus a sofrito with tomatoes and pimentón color the rice.

Paella, My Way
Paella a Mi Estilo

Sure, paella is best cooked over a wood fire or on one of those gas burner contraptions designed for big paella pans. But if you're cooking indoors, keep the size to a pan that fits on your stovetop.

Ingredients for flavor.

Serves 4-6.

6 ounces flat (Romano) green beans
1 ¾ pounds rabbit, cut in small pieces
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
6 tablespoons olive oil
6 ounces fresh pork sausage links, such as chorizo criollo
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1 ½ cups peeled and chopped tomatoes
4 ñoras (dried peppers), stems and seeds removed, or 1 teaspoon pimentón (sweet paprika)
½ teaspoon saffron threads, crushed
¼ cup hot water
2 cups medium-short grain rice
4 cups chicken stock
Sprig of rosemary
½ cup cooked red chard, chopped (optional)

Cut tops and tails off the beans and cut them crosswise in 1 ½ -inch pieces. Blanch them in boiling water until crisp-tender (3 minutes from the time the water returns to a boil). Drain and place in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking.

Sprinkle the pieces of rabbit with salt and pepper. Use the cut-up liver too, if you like it.

Heat 5 tablespoons of oil in a 14–inch paella pan. Add the whole sausage links and the pieces of rabbit. Sauté on medium-high heat, turning, until sausages and rabbit are browned. Remove them from the pan.

Add the garlic to the pan for 30 seconds, then add the ñora, if using, or the spoonful of pimentón. Stir it briefly in the oil and immediately add the tomatoes. Cook the mixture on medium heat for 15 minutes, stirring frequently, until tomatoes are reduced to a jammy consistency. Scrape the sofrito (tomato mixture) into a blender and blend until smooth.

Cook sofrito until tomatoes are thick and jammy.

Combine the saffron and hot water in a cup.

Add remaining 1 tablespoon oil to the paella pan. Stir in the rice and the mixture from the blender. Fry the rice for 2 minutes. Add the saffron and its water and the chicken stock. Bring to a boil.

Use kitchen shears to cut the sausage links into pieces. Place them in the pan with the rice. Add the rabbit and any accumulated juices. Tuck a sprig of rosemary into the rice. Cook on medium-high heat for 10 minutes, stirring once or twice with a wooden paddle. Remove and discard rosemary.

Add the green beans and chopped chard, if using, to the rice. Lower heat to medium-low and cook until rice is just tender, 8 to 10 minutes more. Don't stir the paella, but, if necessary, rotate the pan on stove so all sides get direct heat.

Let the paella set 10 minutes before serving.

Paella is best on a sunny afternoon. But, sure, serve it at night if you prefer.

WORLD PAELLA DAY. Celebrate! Make PAELLA!

More variations on the paella theme:

Rice with Chicken (Arroz con Pollo).

Rice with Clams.

Rice with Sausage and Egg Topping. 

Rice "On the Side" (A Banda).

Soupy Rice with Duck and Mushrooms.

Rice with Bacalao and "Cobblestones."

Baked Rice with Seafood in Cazuela.

Paella a la Americana.

Paella with Chicken and Seafood.

Brown Rice Vegetarian Paella.

Low-Carb Paella.